YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Gerson

lines on the record
70
first
2018-02-26
most recent
2018-02-26
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Yeah, you know, I only have anecdotal material to go by. And I just spoke at a big Baptist school in the south, fundamentalist setting a couple of days ago, gave a message, you know, not a direct attack on the president, but talking about the damage that has been done to American politics by polarization, motivated reasoning, and dehumanization and all of these trends of our time. was there for an hour afterwards with people who wanted to talk, generally saying, I'm so sick of what I see about American politics. And I hope that's true, you know, that it's like looking into an abyss and seeing, if we go down this path too much longer, you Have deep irreparable damage. And so I think that's true. I mean, I lived through the 2000 election, which was really the one that I contributed to most as far as ideologically. Was”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And that is, I mean, that's a serious political problem that, you know, the only things we get seem to be able to get are big reforms pushed early in a presidency. Instead of then incremental change being possible moving onward. But that is a, I mean, I think that's one of the challenges we have, you know, and that remain very much part of this.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I realized that, but it's a good example of the damage that's being done by an effective politics. Because normally under a circumstance like this, you would do Obamacare. You would have criticisms, and you would have some process by which you would fix things. And believe me”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “No, I agree, but there are huge, I think, gaps, unaddressed gaps in our healthcare debate that have to do with cost, although we've seen some gains on the cost side. Coverage is essential. prefer to do those things more through market orient approaches subsidizing individuals which”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I do. The question is how you get there. And I know when you go through the details of that debate, you end up with some of the things you guys did. Some of them were drawn from...”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, it's a reminder of mortality. You know, for me, I get my cancer treatment up at NIH. And they're some of my best friends in politics are the great humanitarian scientists of our time. And I look at You know, cuts at NIH that are proposed and other absurd things. And so you really do value The great scientists that are doing work now in our time.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Absolutely. And I wasn't alone, particularly in the first election, his first presidential election. There was significant evangelical support he got. That was kind of before this deep tribal polarization of our common life. And he was seen as a moral alternative to an amoral era of American politics. Was the first modern figure that was vocal about a born-again religious experience and was ridiculed for it and didn't seem to mind.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, no, that was my first kind of presidential crush. I remember when he did the Delta Queen, do you not remember that? Yeah, Mrs. I waited for.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “No, absolutely not It ended up being when I eventually got there, I'm not going to preview it, but George W. Bush was so different than me, you know, just as he was the... Big man on campus and that it took some getting used to. But ended up eventually getting along.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, I did even in. High school. You know, I was always interested actually in presidential speech writing too. I had it from a young age. I was bookish, awkward child who read presidential autobiographies and foreign policy books. And from the time I was young”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And that's ultimately, I think, a very hopeful message, we don't have to be defined by our worst moment and worst act that redemption is possible. That's kind of what he stood for the rest of his life. And that was a message strangely to some extent, that these guys in prison just took to. They loved him. You know, he had a story of redemption that they identified with someone who had from a very different background.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Well, it's a very evangelical story. I mean, he really had an emotional, almost breakdown. A conviction of his own failures and sins. and came to and had a Christian conversion that he I don't know the best way to put it, but he was the most grateful man that I've ever known every single day he was grateful for that change. He talked about it all the time, very close to the surface And he thought a lot about it and wrote a lot about it, about kind of what power really means and where it really comes from. And how politics can be an illusion, a kind of political illusion. and You know, the things that are worst in our lives, the things that we think are the end can be the beginning.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That's exactly right. He underwent a kind of dramatic public conversion to Christianity even before he entered prison and then became really convicted in prison that, as he put it, he wanted to spend the rest of his life in prison, which he did visiting prisoners and ex-prisoners and their families doing a kind of outreach ministry. to some people that are not very highly visible or valued in our society. And he ended up being, I think, one of the great Social reformers of the 20th century after a political career where he thought I'm going to be important through politics and ended up dishonored. And then found an importance, a cultural importance that was beyond anything that he had really hoped.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Well, you know, I'd always had a political interest, and I ended up writing a column for the school newspaper, the Wheaton College Record, kind of a political column, which got noticed by a guy named Chuck Colson.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Some of it is just what you end up being interested in in your classwork. And I ended up taking classes that were not going toward my degree, philosophy and theology classes. Because I was really attracted to that. And just a kind of sense that I needed to do foundation, intellectual foundation work. Before I did other things, the superstructure. And I wanted to do that in a context broadly kind of theist context. And Georgetown is broadly theist. But, you know, it's... It was not the place that I wanted to do that study. And so ended up transferring and being a theologist. Right, neck of the woods. Yeah, not being a theology major. Did philosophy too.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “No, I didn't. I always had an interest in foreign policy and went to the School of Foreign Service at George Shine University, started there. But then it was not a spiritual crisis, more of an intellectual crisis of deciding I needed to know what I thought about the biggest questions of morality and ethics.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “which are actually kind of highly intellectual thoughtful settings. So that's the atmosphere I came out of. And then when I went off to Wheaton College, that's kind of non-denominational, evangelical, broadly evangelical, kind of a mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis kind of mere Christianity. You didn't”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Well, it's kind of a long story. Knock yourself, it's not a column. Well, they ended up going to Presbyterian churches, reformed tradition churches.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Actually, met in Ohio that were set up by family members on both sides. But my mom was from the hills of Kentucky and my dad was from New York, but they got along great.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Jewish name, it's a very typical American story in a certain way. One grandfather in Nazarene circuit preacher and the other one, you know, they were Jews from New York. And so that's a lot of Americans in that category of that diversity.”

    2018-02-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 220 - Michael Gerson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source