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Jon Huntsman

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2016-02-22

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2016-02-22

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1. “And I'll tell you another interesting thing, David, going from Work in the most compartmented, complicated embassy anywhere in the world that of the U.S. mission in China, where you work literally and figuratively in a foreign language. Going from that mail you to the circus-like atmosphere of the presidential campaign trail, your mind's got to make a fairly quick adjustment between the quiet diplomacy around issues like North Korea to the banging the tin pot before the throngs of people who want to hear red meat. It's a transition that I obviously navigated imperfectly, but I enjoyed every minute of it.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Way you mean you. Yeah. Y I have a hard time saying me. Yes. That may be another problem. I don't know. That's George H.W. Bushism of the highest order.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “But then at the end of the day, remembering that you got to deliver for the American people. You got to solve problems. And you can't solve problems locked in your respective partisan corners on Capitol Hill. That does the taxpayer a huge disservice. You got to roll up your sleeves, compromise, and figure out how to get it done, just like Reagan and Tip O'Neill used to do it, like Clinton and Speaker Gingrich used to do it when they balanced the budget, when nobody said it could be done. We've seen chapters of this happen in this great Republic of ours, but we haven't seen it in a while. That's the kind of politics that I practiced as governor with Republicans, Democrats, and independents. I think it's why we got elected with the highest vote in the history of the state.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I love people and I love ideas and I love moving people toward greater heights of hope and expectation. And I've seen that in politics. And when it works, it's a beautiful thing. But I've also seen the enormous egos in politics. And it turns me off like nothing else. But you'd have to find that match between what you bring to the table, your attitude, your temperament, your experience, your family, with that opening in history. And if it's a mismatch, why waste your time? If there's a match, there might be, there might not be. Given the current trajectory of politics, I doubt it because I was hoping for a race to the top, not a race to the bottom, in terms of how we talked about the issues and how we interacted one with another. And you mentioned no labels. It isn't as much a middle-of-the-road thing or a nonpartisan thing. We have liberals. We have Tea Party people.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “You know, I'd love to do it again if the circumstances were right. But I'm not the kind of person who, based on ego, because I'm not a person of ego, and I can't stand being around people with egos. Unfortunately, there are too many of those in politics, and that's maybe why I don't mix well with other politicians. That's tough.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “This is Abby, yeah, a moment even more difficult than. than any of the travails while in the race. And she spells it out beautifully. It's nicely articulated. If anyone in the listening audience gets a chance, they can go to read it because she captures it in 1500 words or whatever. But we wouldn't trade it for anything. Wouldn't trade it for anything in life.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “As did a lot of other people. New Hampshire can break hearts. Oh, absolutely. Took third in New Hampshire, loved every minute of it. It was absolutely terrific for her whole family. My daughter has written an article for Glamour magazine this month about what it's like when your dad has to bow out of the race. This is Abbey.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Yeah, but you learn to be an eternal optimist. You might not start that way. You might have some things that rub you the wrong way. And in our case, we had a completely new team. Most of my ever worked with before. It was a completely experimental approach at the presidency. And so you got to get to know people and they don't know you. You don't know them as well. And you end up finding the right rhythm routine for the campaign. And we knew for us it would be New Hampshire and we put all our chips down in New Hampshire and worked it.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “It's very much three-dimensional. And the presidential platform is very much that the best of moments and the worst of moments. You have days of tremendous euphoria and success and days of deep despair and questioning whether you have what it takes, why you got into it in the first place. If I could only burst out of this cocoon and get back to civilian life. And then the next day will come along and you'll think, this is the grandeur of politics in America at the highest levels. And I'm the most fortunate human being in the world to be able to participate in it.”

   2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Do you wake up in a cold sweat every now and again as Jeb Bush is probably about right now Know it represented for us, so campaigning for governor was a completely different thing. Here are the issues. You get out in glad hand, you put forward your best argument, and you can control the narrative.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Absolutely. I think people will give you higher marks for consistency. They might disagree with you at the moment, and it might hurt a little bit, but I think over time they give you higher marks for consistency.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “I was. I think that was a political calculation. And that's something that I don't think is going to wear well over the longer term.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “She was different as a diplomat because she was all professional all the time. And it was diplomacy. It was the issues. It was North Korea. It was human rights. It was trade. And so it was a much different mail you. So when I see her on the stump, sometimes shrieking about the politics of the moment, I say, even as a Republican, about a Democrat, you know, if people could see her as I saw her when she was in the trenches in some pretty difficult circumstances representing the United States, they would think differently about her.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “I think some might be generational. I think some might be family name fatigue. I think some might be her inability to capture the emotion of the moment and to articulate it properly back to the voting population. So the mechanics of hard work and making sure you got a good team in place, I think all of that is just to be assumed that she can do well. But I think some of the other parts of a successful campaigner maybe are missing or not up to where they might be for a successful candidate.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “She was a hard worker, and I have to say that I've been in and out of the State Department during different phases of my career. And I've seen a lot of different secretaries of state. And some do well with the professional bureaucracy, which you have to work, the diplomats, the foreign service officers. They're good. They're smart. There's entry by way of the Foreign Service exam. And they take the work very seriously, and they don't want to screw up as their secretary. They want to know that that person is at the top of their game and responsive to the needs of the department and will interact well with the regional professionals. She did well with the department. I mean, Colin Powell was another person who did well with the department. George Schultz did very well with the department. Some of them less so. They get the Praetorian Guard around them and lock themselves on the seventh floor and don't interact a whole lot.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Well, none of that would suggest that you're a good politician. So I'm just saying it's an effective diplomat. Some of the things you have to do, you got to understand the subject matter. You have to be a good negotiator. You have to interact well with people. One of the things that the Chinese and I suspect most countries of the world liked about Hillary Clinton was that she was a celebrity. So they could deal with a secretary of state who was very much a celebrity. That's a big deal. It brings them face.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “hardworking, diligent Always read the briefing books and was prepared for every meeting, embraced complex issues, digested the data, and was always competent at the negotiating table, is what I walked away from”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “I talked to him after 2012. When we were being encouraged to go as an independent, I never thought it was a viable thing to do and not very interested in it. But we had a couple of conversations. And he was very, very candid about the conclusions that he drawn when he looked at it himself on a national basis.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “To all 50 states, which is an enormous hurdle for an independent to get over. And probably the exclusive nature of the presidential debates themselves, which pretty much cater to the duopoly, red and blue, Republican Democrat. That's a real hurdle for independence if they are left out of the presidential debates. So my guess is that he would look at it, crunch the numbers as he's talked.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “I think the demographics of politics in America today, David, are going to take us increasingly in that direction, simply because you've got more unaffiliated, unaligned voters today than ever before, what is it, 42, 45 percent of the American voting public. Republicans have come down to what, 25%, Democrats may be a 27%. You've got a huge bloc who run affiliated. And I think the marketplace, because politics is very much a real live marketplace. It's always moving and always changing to the conditions of the country. I think eventually we find ourselves with viable third-party options. I think we're maybe a couple of election cycles away from it. But my guess is that Mike Bloomberg, who's a smart guy, he's going to look at the barriers that stand in the way of actually getting it done, like the electoral college system, like the difficulty in getting ballot access.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Not anymore. I went on one TV show that... That you've probably been on a thousand times back in late summer and basically said, you know, if he does well in Ohio, which he did, if he does well in New Hampshire, and certainly if he does well in South Carolina. In Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina He's there Build up such a head of steam that he'll be unstoppable.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Well, if he's the nominee, I mean, I'm a Republican. I tend to gravitate to whomever the nominee is. I just happen to think that this go around, we have a very unusual possibility if he makes it that far. And I think the chances are better than 50-50 that he makes it to the finish line in terms of the nomination.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Here's why I could support him because he's strong on things like campaign finance reform. And I think it's going to take an extraordinary unique leader to stand up and say the way that we're doing this on the campaign finance side is broken and we need to fix it. I think he's right about bringing on board a new generation of the best and the brightest and wiping out the old Washington establishment and the old Washington culture. I think that's a healthy thing. I'd love to see someone stand out who's stand up, who's a total outsider and see if that can be done because I think what actually be a pretty healthy”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “The problem is the debates and the news cycles are all kind of geared to soundbite politics. And if you can't fit it into a soundbite, you're not going to get on the air. And if you want to get a soundbite, it's figured that out.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “No matter who is the person, no, but that was my feeling throughout. There's no way that anybody's going to repeal and replace. This is just a soundbite. So I became very wary of the soundbite culture around presidential politics. And the problem is.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “In some cases, there were some things you could get done and other things you could not get done, but it's going to take a long time.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Like the wall and like tariffs. These are issues that I think make good sound bites and people cheer them on as they did when I was running four years ago when all the candidates would say and we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare. That's all you had to say and people stand up and cheer. I never did because I knew all the while that, first of all, I was working on healthcare reform in my own state. And I knew the complexity of it all.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Well, the Chinese would look at it and say we now have a relationship based somewhat on equality. We're the big players on the world stage. We're going to negotiate in good faith and based on a level playing field, even though we don't get it from them. And they would watch a new president as they always do very, very carefully. And if there was an attempt to impose a tariff that they would deem to be unfair, up would go a counter tariff in response to it. And you'd have a tit-for-tat that would play out.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “I don't think we've been as engaged as we should be. I think there's a lot we've left on the table because China is an unhappy political story for the most part. There's a lot of downside, not a lot of upside. So I think you can take the position where I think I'm just going to manage my way through it and not do anything too aggressive for fear that it could backfire on me and blow back is a bad political story. So I think we've probably left a lot on the table that otherwise could have been gained. And we're just sort of managing the downside with it.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Sound bite, but we're talking about an issue that is highly complicated that is going to need both sides coming to the table for us to be mighty aggressive. I mean, the United States has to be an aggressive negotiator.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Well, I've been involved with China for decades in business as a diplomat, as a trade negotiator, in every conceivable possible way. I've seen the worst business deals in the world done by the smart business people. I've seen bad trade deals. I've seen good business deals. I've seen good trade deals. So you can't just uniformly say that the government guys are getting it wrong and the business guys have it all right. China's a very tricky marketplace and it takes a lot of years to understand it. And once you understand it, the rules of the road change in China because they're dealing with internal economic reform today more aggressively than they have at any other time since Zhu Rongji was a premier before they got into the World Trade Organization. So again, it makes for an easy bumper sticker. It makes for an easy...”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “It isn't perfect, but it's better than doing nothing. We don't live in a static world. To imagine that if we don't engage that things are just going to stay neutral in the region, no, not so. The Asia Pacific is highly dynamic, and China is a very aggressive player in Asia Pacific. They've already got their own version of TPP. The standards are not nearly as high as the content that we've negotiated in terms of protection of intellectual property rights, trade facilitation, financial services, et cetera, et cetera. But if we're not in there playing a role as a leader, as we always have, then somebody else is going to fill that vacuum. And chances are there are going to be less benevolent, and the chances are they're going to put forward standards of trade and economic conduct that are going to be not nearly what they would be otherwise if the United States was leading the charge. And I think that's a bad outcome.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Pre WTO, and you look at those that have emerged post WTO, and they get a little bit better with each passing generation. And you get more people bought into leveling the playing field, bringing down tariff and non-tariff barriers, and letting goods flow.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “So that's where we find ourselves. And my issue with all of the above, whether trade, whether immigration, is that we're distilling everything to a soundbite, to a bumper sticker. These are highly complicated issues. You can't sit down and do a trade deal and expect to throw a tariff on another country without some sort of response and reprisal that's going to be very difficult for this country to navigate its way through. You look at Mexico, Japan, and China simply throwing a tariff on that would affect our trading relationship. It would be immediately retaliated against, which starts a trade war, which throws you into a tailspin that would affect the global economy. It'd be a horrible thing. That said, can you make trade deals better? Of course you can make trade deals better. They're always getting better. You look at trade deals that were done a couple of generations ago, just sort of post-GAT and”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Well, I don't think he's wrong on all of his issues, and I think that's one of the reasons he's got to increasingly broad-based support. He's nationalistic, he's populist, he's got the old Buchanan parot approach to the world. Which is to say build here first. And I think he's absolutely right. I mean, that's one of the problems we have today. We've got a very weak infrastructure in this country, literally and figuratively, that must be addressed. Because you can't practice your values abroad. You can't preach them unless you're practicing them more perfectly here at home”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “I think it may say more about the demographics of the Republican Party than it does about experience as a governor versus experience as a legislator. And I think it probably speaks a lot to the streak of populism that has grown out of the Republican Party. It's almost like we're seeing a new party that is being born before our very eyes. I mean, the Republican Party is morphing into something that doesn't at all resemble what it has been in the last and last many election cycles. And I think it's a direct outgrowth of the demographics that underlie the Republican movement and what has happened to people in the last generation in terms of the economy, in terms of how they feel about where their country sits vis- ⁇-vis the rest of the world, and their own sense of security.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Forgot to mention that. But think about it, David. I mean, it's absolutely an unbelievable commentary on where politics has come the last few years and how sharp the turn actually is that the party has made away from that kind of governance. These were the hottest of hot commodities, and each of them a bright red Republican. I mean, Rick Perry had the hottest economy in the country, highest job growth of any state by far in America, and a true conservative. Bobby Jindal, very much a movement conservative, and Walker was seen as a hero among many for what he did with public unions. And I look back at it now and I see, and every one of them gone. All of them had their faces on the cover of time and newsweek at one point saying.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “You can't even have these conversations. So imagine me in a town hall meeting early on when somebody wants an explanation as to why I was in favor of giving a driver privilege card to an undocumented worker. Well, as a governor, I had to deal with these real-world issues. How do you keep the labor force mobilized such that we can address our growing economy, which at the time Utah was the fastest growing economy in the country? How do you do it in a way that's safe that doesn't make it a driver's license where they can't use it as an identification card, but still keep the economy going? So we had to think through these issues in real time. And they became huge liabilities later on and still are today.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “As sometimes is the case, maybe you underestimate how strongly people feel in the post-Lehman collapse world about things like immigration reform. We led the charge on Western states' immigration reform. I got together with Janet Napolitano, who was then governor of Arizona. And the rest of the Western governors, 20 plus of them, in creating basically a roadmap on immigration reform, every governor in the western United States bought into it and we signed it. You go look it up and look at the principles for comprehensive immigration reform. And I suspect when we get around to doing this issue at some point, it'll look very similar to what we did many, many years ago.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “So, and then post layman, after returning from China, the party was angry. It was divided. The Tea Party had risen up. And for all reasons that I think are perfectly understandable, the economic storm left everybody in a hole. Retirements had been lost, home values had been significantly diminished. unemployment was on the rise and people were scared. And it totally changed the whole demeanor of politics. And as we approached running in 2012, it was, well, you can either become something altogether new and pretend you didn't do the things you did just a couple years earlier as governor, or you can run on your record. And I thought, well, that's not even a discussion as far as I'm concerned. You run on what you've done. Some things people will like, some things people won't like. But, you know.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “You go back to the cap and trade around Sox and Knox back in the early 1970s when Richard Nixon created the EPA, when William Ruckel's house was the first EPA director. In 1972, I think it was. So the Republican Party has a long history with the Environment Conservation Protection. We've just lost it along the way. But there was a period there, Dave, you'll remember, Pre-Lehman, let's call it the pre-Lehman collapse period, where Republican governors, and I recall so well, as chair of the Western Governors Association, we'd all sit down, Republicans and Democrats alike, and we talk about the environment, we talk about water, we talk about climate-related issues, and everybody was kind of looking again on the same page. It wasn't like, do you believe, do you not believe kind of thing? There wasn't the political divide that exist today that is so deep and I think injurious to a healthy conversation. And the same was true on healthcare reform. There were a lot of novel and innovative things that were taking place among Republican governors at the time around health care and how to deal with rising costs and how to deal with a different approach from insurance companies.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Somehow some air got in. We needed some new excitement in life. But it was almost like you're hermetically sealed in Beijing and that bad air in Beijing. You remember the Republican Party pre-Lehman collapse, which was optimistic, innovative, creative, willing to embrace new designs as was the case with a lot of the governors around the environment.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “It's it, David. It's almost like looking back at the time of Theodore Roosevelt, I mean, the progressive period of. Republican politics, we forget that, and in my mind I differentiate it like this, the pre-Lehman collapse Republican Party in the post-Lehman collapse Republican Party, because I live both. I was hermetically sealed in China, thanks to you in the White House, and I enjoyed every minute of that. It was a terrific discussion. Not sealed.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “There was a high road campaign that ended with a hug, you know, with the Republican and the Democrat. But that was my experience with what I'd call the ultimate high road campaign. And I thought the people benefited from that campaign because there wasn't money or airtime wasted on frivolous discussion. It was all on where I wanted to go where Scott wanted to go and people understood it.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “I know it sounds so 19th century. But it's great. Anyway I remember so well the night of our victory, we talked by phone. And I said, Scott, either I go to your headquarters or you come to the hotel ballroom where we are, and we're going to shake hands because he wanted to do that anyway. And he came over to the hotel ballroom and we hugged each other in the lobby in front of the cameras who were there. And I remember the news the next day was a highly unusual event occurred in the state of Utah.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “You don't squawk at each other. You don't put goofy negative campaign ads on the air. You talk about the issues. And we had some issues in common, but we also diverged on some pretty key issues. And we had respectful debates, got right to the issues at hand, pointed out our differences, and did it in a very respectful way.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Son of probably the most beloved governor in the history of the recent history of our state. And he himself, a superb person. Former U.S. attorney, Rhodes Scholar, Dean of the Law School at University of Utah.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “And we worked the precincts extraordinarily diligently. We went house by house, delegate by delegate, and you got to have a couple thousand to win. And we spent the better part of that year just hand-to-hand combat, just getting around and talking to people, conversation by conversation. And in any event, we were successful through the convention and got out into a primary. The incumbent governor, Governor Walker, did not get through the primary, so she dropped at that point. And I was in out a one-on-one situation in a primary and beat that guy and then went on to run against Scott Matheson Jr.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Yes, that's right. And so she was up in the odds-on favorite and the primary, we have a convention system in Utah. The convention was very, very crowded, probably eight good candidates, Speaker of the House, former President of the Senate, a typical roundup of state leaders.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Oh, it did hurt, but it cuts both ways. You know, when you're coming up as the second, you can have people who hold that against you, the success of the first, because in order to get to that point of success, sometimes you got to be aggressive and sometimes folks feel like they're left out or whatever. Or it just creates enity. And in politics, that can be held against you. So on one hand, I had a lot of real true believers. On others, it was proved to me that you can do the task. You're young. You didn't come up the traditional route through the state legislature, through the county commission. What makes you better than the others who are running it? And it was a crowded field. We had, including the incumbent governor, Oline Walker, first woman governor in state history.”

    2016-02-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 31 - Gov. Jon Huntsman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source