The Axe Files - Ep. 114: Thomas Friedman · Politics and CNN, "The Axe Files" with your host, David...

Ep. 114 – Thomas Friedman 1

The Axe Files - Ep. 114: Thomas Friedman Released January 19, 2017 [00:00:06] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now from the University of Chicago-Institute of Politics and CNN, "The Axe Files" with your host, David Axelrod. DAVID AXELROD, "THE AXE FILES" HOST: Tom Friedman is a certifiably brilliant journalist and public intellectual. No one has written more compellingly over a long period of time about the Middle East, about the climate change, and a whole host of issues that go to our society, our culture and our world. He came by the Institute of Politics the other day to talk about his new book, "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations". And we sat down later to talk about his life, his career, and just what he means by the age of accelerations and what we do about it. Tom Friedman, welcome. THOMAS FRIEDMAN, COLUMNIST, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Thanks. AXELROD: Always good to be with you and we just came from a brilliant presentation at the Institute of Politics about your new book, which we will discuss later because it's very, very relevant right now. But I want to talk about you. FRIEDMAN: Great. AXELROD: I mean, we all know who you are now, three times Pulitzer Prize winner and honored public intellectual columnist for the New York Times. But you didn't spring from your beginnings that way. Tell me a little bit about growing up in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota. FRIEDMAN: So, I was born in Minneapolis on the north side, 1953, and my parents are part of the great Jewish immigration Exodus from north side. AXELROD: Were you folks – they weren't immigrants themselves. FRIEDMAN: I know. They were both born in Minneapolis too actually, yes. AXELROD: And when did your family come over here? FRIEDMAN: My -- through the century, basically my great grandparents who I knew, they passed away when I was quite young. But my parents moved out to Saint Louis Park, this big sort of big suburb small town outside of Minneapolis in 1956, I was born in '53. I grew up there. I went to the public schools with the same group of kids that today are still my best friends. I went to Saint Louis Park High. My life, David, really changed when I was in 10th grade. I want to be a professional golfer. Basically ...


AXELROD: You still play golf, right? FRIEDMAN: Yes, I still play golf. AXELROD: I think you played a few around with the president. FRIEDMAN: I'd played with -- I got to play with the president once. It was … AXELROD: Now, what's handicap? FRIEDMAN: I'm a five handicap, yes. AXELROD: Let's be honest, I mean, he's leaving office. We can reveal secrets. FRIEDMAN: That's right. AXELROD: You're a better golfer than he is. FRIEDMAN: Yes. Especially early on his gotten better, he tells ever since we play. But so … AXELROD: By the way, he bowled a 37 in Altoona during the 2008 campaign, which became a huge issue and now he's had his own bowling alley for the last eight years. And he's become pretty proficient bowler. FRIEDMAN: It is. AXELROD: I'm sure you challenged him. FRIEDMAN: I did. AXELROD: And he tried to catch up with you along the way. FRIEDMAN: Oh he's a lefty too. And, you know, the golf was not really designed for lefties but we have some good lefty players like Phil Mickelson. But anyways, I want to be personal golfer and then in 10th grade, two things happened to me when I had a legendary journalism teacher on my high school, Heidi Steinberg (ph). And she really turned me on to journalist. AXELROD: Had she been a journalist? FRIEDMAN: She was -- no, she always taught journalism from -- she's from Nebraska. But when she passed away, I wrote a column about her. I called My Favorite Teacher. And it's still the most e-mailed column I've ever written. It turns out everybody has a favorite teacher. AXELROD: Yes. You know, I had Mrs. Ruff (ph) in 1st and 3rd Grade who exposed us like little kids too this is during the Civil Rights Movement -- FRIEDMAN: Interesting.


AXELROD: -- King, all the issues of the day that was my first exposure to the New York Times. FRIEDMAN: Mine too. It was actually in her class. She taught me that a journalist starts that they reading the New York Times, which is in mail the day later basically to Minneapolis and Saint Louis Park. Anyways, in December of that year, my older sister had gone on a junior broad to Tel Aviv University. And -- AXELROD: Now, were you guys a religious family? FRIEDMAN: We were sort of just modern conservative. I wouldn't describe it as religious but conservative Jewish families sort of in the mainstream then. And over that Christmas, my parents took me to Israel and it was the first time I've been on an airplane. And it was the first time I've been out of the state of Minnesota except for excursions into Wisconsin for a summer camp. And I don't know maybe I'll be going to China first, or Greece first, or to be something else but the Middle East just captured me. AXELROD: Why? FRIEDMAN: So, I don't know it was so different. It was exotic. I do believe in a previous life. I was a bizarre merchant somewhere, you know. [00:05:00] But anyways, all three summers of high school I went back and done a kibbutz in Israel. And Israel just took over my life then. I remember this is 1968 post '67 war, the kind of heroic Israel of that time. AXELROD: I just want tell you that when I was a young report to Chicago Tribune, I finagled a trip to Israel to write features. This is the one the newspapers had budgets. FRIEDMAN: Yeah, that's right, exactly. Yes. AXELROD: And another reporter and I had said he'd send us and let us write a series of features stories and we had a bureau chief, Jonathan Broder. FRIEDMAN: Sure. I remember yes. AXELROD: But I stayed -- I was there for a month. And, you know, I come from Jewish family. My father was a Jewish immigrant, but I was taken so much that I actually thought about staying. And the reason was at that time there was still this pervasive sense of things being more about life and death, and every day being worth living in the material sort of culture that also defined America wasn't there then. It was really much more -- there was romanticism still. FRIEDMAN: Yes. There was a sense of experimentation, the frontier. There was a frontier there. And that was very exciting back in the '68. It was even more so and so I live in the kibbutz all three summers of high school. So, 10th Grade really changed my life. I've got interested in journalism in the Middle East and was interested in those ever after basically. I then started taking the Arabic as a freshman college. And I started at the University of Minnesota, did a semester at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the American


University in Cairo. I got a Marshall scholarship to go to Oxford graduate school. But I had to study … AXELROD: But you did a couple years of Brandeis. FRIEDMAN: … I did. I'm graduated from Brandeis ultimately. AXELROD: I was interested because I read that you perhaps you wrote that you confronted some skepticism on the part of your classmates because you'd gone to Egypt. FRIEDMAN: Yes absolutely. AXELROD: And you'd study in Egypt and you spoke Arabic and this offended some of you Jewish class in Brandies FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. Exactly. I had to deal with that sort of very, you know, intense the Zionist group that at that time, you know, we didn't have an American Embassy in Cairo that was after the '73 war. And so, I've been -- I learned at a very young age. You know, just about how to talk about that issue, how to defend yourself, how to defend your views, you know. And anyways, I spent my first year in England at the School Oriental and African Studies in London and that's where on I met my wife and who was doing her master's degree at the London School of Economics. And I really got my start in journalism in 1975. Ann and I were walking down the street in London and this is really how I got started truly because I'd been on my school paper. I did a little of college but not much. And Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford. And we're walking on streets in the London evening standard, you know, they have those blaring headlines, you know, Brad to Jen were finished, you know, whatever. AXELROD: Yes. That's still true. FRIEDMAN: Exactly, yeah. And the blaring headline was "Carter to Jews: If Elected I Promise to Fire Dr. K." And I stop my then girlfriend now wife and I said damn, "Look at that, Jimmy Carter is running for president." And he's trying to win Jewish votes by promising to fire the first ever Jewish Secretary of State, isn't that odd? And I don't know what possessed me but I went back to my dorm room and I wrote a column about it. My then girlfriend now wife from Des Moines, Iowa happened to be of neighbors of Gilbert Kronenberg who was the editor or page editor of the Des Moines Register. And she took it home on vacation, on break. She gave it to him. He liked it and printed it on a half page of the Des Moines Register and they paid me $50. AXELROD: Yes. I remember those days. FRIEDMAN: Yes. That's right. And I thought that was the most amazing thing. I had been walking down the street. I had an opinion. I wrote it up and someone paid me $50. And I was hooked ever after.


AXELROD: And you went to work for the UPI for? FRIEDMAN: Yes. So what happened was then I actually wrote on 10 Op-Ed pieces for the Des Moines Register then the Minneapolis Star and Tribune while I was in Oxford and that was my sort of pilot clips. So when I went to apply for a job I applied. I was in London. I got a degree in Arabic and Middle East studies. I studied a classic British Arabist education at St. Anthony's, you know, has Lawrence of Arabia's papers and I applied at AP and UPI in London on Fleet Street. An AP said, "Kid, you've never covered it two alarm fire, you know, you've never coverer a city hall meeting, you got Op-Ed pieces, yeah. AXELROD: Right. [00:09:59] FRIEDMAN: Yeah. But UPI being UPI kind of Avas (ph), APs heard said that will take a chance on, the kid studied Arabic. There's an Iranian revolution. They seem to have the same squiggles, you know, and we can teach you how to cover fire if you can write Op-Ed pieces, you know. And so they took a chance on me and hired me in 1978. AXELROD: I have a parallel, less lofty story when I was here at the University of Chicago and back at that time I was seven nobody wants to talk about anything that happened after the year 1800. And I was very interested in politics. FRIEDMAN: You guts should be a here. AXELROD: Be here. FRIEDMAN: In what? AXELROD: In political science. I don't think I'll be remembered for the scholarship. I turned during that (inaudible) writing for newspaper. FRIEDMAN: Sure. AXELROD: And I got a -- I walked into the Park Harold and talked to him to hiring me as a political columnist when I was 18. And by the time I graduated, I really knew everything about Chicago politics. FRIEDMAN: Interesting. AXELROD: And I went in my city editor the other day, I got internship at the Tribune. They hired me and the editor said to me the city editor said, you know, we could put you on politics right now because you know all about all the Byzantine wards stuff. But you don't how to be a reporter so, you're going on nights. And I spent two and half years on nights. Probably the best education I could have. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.


AXELROD: And, you know, really exposed me to things I never would have seen as well as taught me how to … FRIEDMAN: Basic reporting. AXELROD: … cover a breaking. FRIEDMAN: That's right underlying? AXELROD: Yes exactly. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. AXELROD: So you did some of those -- FRIEDMAN: I did a year in London for UPI. I covered tax strikes and I covered a lot of oil stuff because OPEC was just emerging in 1979, during the revolution was happening. Even when I was on Fleet Street for a year in UPI and the number two man in Beirut got shot, the number two man in UPI in that year by a man robbing a grocery store, on Humber Street a jewelry store on Humber Street, excuse me. And he said I want to go home. I don't want to collect $200. I don't wanna pass go get me out here. And UPI came to me and I was 25 and I said would you like to go to Beirut in the middle of civil war and be our number two correspondent. And I turn to my now wife, then wife and now if we've just gotten married from Des Moines Iowa and I said we're going to Beirut. And so went after the year of 1979 into the middle of civil war. AXELROD: And she didn't say the hell we are? FRIEDMAN: No, no. She knew when she married me. That was part of the deal. That was part of our marriage contract. That we're going to spend some time in the Middle East. And so, we went to Beirut in May 1979 for UPI. First night, we're there at the Commodore Hotel, I heard a gun fired. And actually it was the first gunshot I'd ever heard in my life. And I heard a lot of them afterwards. AXELROD: That's the difference between Minneapolis and rural Minnesota. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely, exactly. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, we are in Beirut for two years for them, The New York Times. And that's my work. They offered me a job, they brought me back to New York for a year as a business reporter. I got interested in business because I'd be covering OPEC too, and then sent me back to Beirut in April 1982. AXELROD: Yeah, pretty eventful time. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. And Israel invaded Lebanon six weeks later. And it suddenly became this amazing story. I covered the embassy bombing, the Israeli invasion, Sabra and Shatila, the Marine bombing. I covered all the stories. It was an incredible drama and, you know, from a journalist point of view being in the, you know, "right place at the right".


AXELROD: How did you -- and you win your first Pulitzer Prize? FRIEDMAN: I win it for my coverage of Sabra and Shatila. AXELROD: For that? FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: And how was it adapting to war coverage? FRIEDMAN: You know, it was challenging. What I always tell people in retrospect -- AXELROD: When you golf -- but no you don't get killed playing golf. FRIEDMAN: No absolutely. Although I did play golf in Beirut a lot. They had a 13 hole course that actually the driving range faced the Palestinian shooting range. You know, and the British ambassador used to say it's the only course, you're happy to be in a bunker. So, but, you know, it was an adjustment. But what I cherish about it and it's funny, yesterday I was just with some dear friends from Beirut of those days the Lebanese ambassador of the U.N. Nawaf Salam is really my oldest Lebanese friend. And we spent a lot of time together and we were on the Titanic together. And so I have a special bond with those people because we went to searing experience together. And what I appreciated about it was, you know, you really only understand how molecules behave at very high temperatures. And the spectrum of human emotions, you get to see in a war is so much wider than you get to see a cover in the White House or the state department, you know. And so, I learned more about myself and other people of what they're capable of, both good and evil in those four years or five years in Beirut than I ever possible. AXELROD: Actually I think the White House is -- it's an honor to cover the White House in certain ways, one of the least satisfying. You covered the White House for a couple of year. FRIEDMAN: For one year and how I arrange of the times are great, you know, editor used to say under cola journalism (ph), you know. AXELROD: Yeah. You're basically there waiting to be fed. FRIEDMAN: It's a cross between baby-sitting and just -- I'm not even sure what the other thing is, but it's not satisfying although I did it for one year. [00:15:06] I covered the first year of Bill Clinton, which was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I have to tell you. And that was enough for me. AXELROD: Yes. I don't know if it's going to be baby-sitting in the next semester and if it's


there's be a lot of spanking. FRIEDMAN: Oh absolutely, absolutely. Yes. I shudder to think what it'll be like. AXELROD: So, just turning back to your experience. You know, we had Steve Kerr on the show on the podcast. FRIEDMAN: Yes. I covered, is that the sesame? AXELROD: Yes. And it really riveting to hear him talk about his dad and that experience and the fact that his dad returned to Beirut to take over the American University there, at a time when he knew -- FRIEDMAN: Right. It was dangerous. AXELROD: -- that it was dangerous and he was frightened but he felt honor bound to come to follow through on his commitment, and shortly after he got there he was assassinated. FRIEDMAN: So I told the story in the book because Malcolm, first of all, because I studied in Middle East studies Malcolm Kerr was a real tighten in the field. And what I loved about him was not only his inside Europe, to the classic work on the Arab Cold War. But he was a very balanced guy when it came to Israel Arab stuff, you know. And you can see that in Steve, you can see it in his mom. So, we had been at their house for dinner a few weeks before and I never forget, you know, Beirut is very conspiratorial place. Everything is a conspiracy there and we're having dinner -- AXELROD: But just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean no one is after you. FRIEDMAN: -- no absolutely. But we're having dinner over out there house, my wife, Ann and I with Shannon and Malcolm and a few other couples and there was a terrible rainstorm broke out. And I remember Malcolm saying, "Riley, do you think the Syrians did it?" You know, and lone behold tragically, a few weeks later I got the call from the police radio that he'd been shot. I run over to the University. I was in the hallway where he was shot. I can still see the bullet holes in the wall. And I wrote that story and when the New York Times did the reconstruction in our -- just a few weeks ago, with Steve, it was -- I had no idea they're doing it, but I picked up the paper and I discovered a little quote from my new story that day, you know, what had happened. AXELROD: You probably lost more than one friend. FRIEDMAN: Oh yes, absolutely. AXELROD: In these conflicts, how do you cover the assassination of a friend? FRIEDMAN: You know, obviously, you know, the first thing that takes over is just instinct and, you know, you cover it. But, you know, the other way I've compartmentalize Beirut and


Jerusalem, I saw enormous amount of violence there too and new people who had been killed. As I say is that, I simply dealt with it as not in a purulent way, but I knew that I was having an emotional experience that was really unusual. And I was getting an insight into how I behave, how I reacted to those kind of things, how other people did, who did what -- how did you build resilience in that kind of situation. And it grew me up fast. This little, you know, whenever people -- whenever I'd describe my encounter with the Middle East, Beirut and Jerusalem, it's always a Minnesota boy goes to Beirut. And what do I mean by that? We'll talk about in a later. I grew up in a real community. And people say to me, what did you see in Beirut? I said, I saw a community breakdown? Other people might say something else. I say I saw everybody going to their own confessional schools, dividing lines of sandbags. I came from the embrace of an incredibly pluralistic community, and then I went to a place and I saw it all breakdown. AXELROD: We will talk about that because I think that this retreat to tribalism is something that we're seeing all over the world, including in our own country, and the breakdown of community. And it's probably the single most threatening -- FRIEDMAN: Totally. AXELROD: --thing that we face here as I mentioned we'll talk about why we're there. When we talk about the … FRIEDMAN: But let me just say one thing about that because it's a backdrop to may be a segue, the talking about the book in the sense that somehow … AXELROD: … no I segue too quickly -- FRIEDMAN: … OK. AXELROD: -- few other things. FRIEDMAN: But I wanted to just say one thing while we're on it because it's so appropriate, which is some psychiatrist who would put me on the couch now and I would say doctor here is really what happened. So, I spent the first really 25 or 30 years my journalism career, pushing all these Middle East hopes, Oslo spring Iraq. I was -- I hoped they will come on to democracy all of this things. AXELROD: Yes. I'm going to ask you about that. FRIEDMAN: I really pushed all those rocks and in the end, they all came tumbling down over me and I got steamrolled. And so, I came home and I started writing about nation building in America, and something in President Obama who resonate. [00:20:00] AXELROD: Yes, yes.


FRIEDMAN: That was why I really felt the bomb with him. I owe that energy. I was put in the Middle East so I was bring home to America and then I discovered we were turning into Sunnis and Shiites, that the same kind of tribalism that had driven me out of there was now infecting Washington D.C. And so, what I basically did and what really in some way stimulated this book, Axe, is that I decided to go home, to the one source of optimism and community right where I started. First of all, just to see if it was true or did I just make it all up. AXELROD: In other words idealized at your hometown. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. That I idealize. So, I went back home and I didn't make it up. You know, I went and interviewed my teachers and my colleagues and the kids I went to school with. And it was this remarkable today as it was then and therefore could I draw lessons from it that I could share. So, my politics really shrink, you know, from that Middle East heroic peacemaking back to Washington, back -- I ended up where I started. AXELROD: I'm going to take a short break. And we'll be right back with Tom Friedman. You've mentioned Oslo, I was in Israel in 1994 with a group and we visited with three leaders. We visited with Bibi Netanyahu who was the leader of the opposition at that time. We met with Shimon Peres who I believe was a foreign minister probably and with Yitzhak Rabin who was who was the prime minister. And a person in the group asked the same question to each, which was what were you going to tell the settlers if the Oslo Accord goes through who have to leave their homes and Bibi, so I won't have to tell them anything because they won't have to leave their homes if I'm the prime minister. Peres said in a way that I didn't think he realized sounded as it did, but he said I'll tell them they're free to standard Palestinian rule. And Rabin said I will tell, I would tell them he said of where really he is it was his way, I do I will tell them that too much blood has been shed, we've lost too many of our children. And peace has a price and this is the price. And you could see why he was the leader. FRIEDMAN: Yes, absolutely. That's right yes. AXELROD: And I raise that because I know you were gone by 1994. FRIEDMAN: But I was going back regularly and I saw Rabin a week before he was killed. AXELROD: I always think -- I've thought since that time that the young man who killed him was probably the most destructive person in history since the person who shot the Archduke Duke Ferdinand at the touch off for World War I. What was lost when Rabin was assassinated and where are we today? And is it recoverable is the prospect of peace between Israel and Palestinians is it a lost hope? FRIEDMAN: So, what was lost were three things. Actually the first was a unique leader who blended what my friendly and weaseled to called he was the bastard for peace Rabin. In other words, he was a progressive. He believed in peace but Israelis trusted him.


AXELROD: Yes. FRIEDMAN: Because they know … AXELROD: He's an honored general. FRIEDMAN: He was a general. They knew he wouldn't sell them down the river that this wasn't because he has some allusions about Palestinians. They all have converted. They all love the, you know, he knew just the region. He knew what he was doing and so they trusted and he was a bastard for peace. What was lost was that unique balance which very few people have. Sharon had it too. He was more bastard than peace maker but he got out of Gaza. AXELROD: And really involved, you know, he started the Second Intifada. FRIEDMAN: Right, that's right. AXELROD: And then he evolved into a … FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And but was lost was time because when Rabin was killed, I would guess there were about 50,000 to 70,000 settlers something like that, today there is almost half a million, you know. And so, you could think about that question you raise, what we tell the people and we have to move them 50,000 people. I remember it took the Israelis 50,000 police and military to remove 8,000 people from Gaza. So if you're talking about 400,000 to 500,000 in the west bank, it's actually inconceivable. AXELROD: And what does this kind -- I know you wrote a fairly strong, fairly strong, it's a very, very strong column recently about the Trump. FRIEDMAN: Emerges. AXELROD: Then Trump approach to that issue into the Middle East and his appointment of David Friedman as the ambassador. What you think that means in terms of not just the peace process but the prospect of stability? [00:25:03] FRIEDMAN: Yeah. Well, first of all, just a warning to your listeners. I ask it, I can ruin any dinner party, and I do weddings and I do weddings and bar mitzvah, so what's you're about to get is going to be undiluted. I believe the two state solutions is over. I believe we're locked into a one state situation. It's still salvageable in the sense of the Israel offered Palestinians radical autonomy. I think you can imagine some kind of stable outcome at least for a while. But if Trump appoints his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman who is on record, proudly as saying that Jews who believe in a two state solution, the equivalent of Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in concentration camps, which I said in that column is actually the most vile thing I've ever heard one Jew say to another. And I've covered this issue in my whole adult life. By the way, I have a


lot of friends in the Israeli the people I talked to all the time. I've never heard anyone talk that way, and not about me, knowing that I'm at least to my face … AXELROD: You get the sense that he may be to the right of the Israeli right. FRIEDMAN: Oh, I actually think that this, if he is appointed ambassador versus the huge problem for Bibi for the first time the United States who have an ambassador to Israel to his right. AXELROD: Right. And I always thought it was useful as much as he didn't get along with Obama … FRIEDMAN: He needed Obama. AXELROD: … of controlling his right to say, you know, I'd love to this but … FRIEDMAN: "But that bastard Obama won't let me do it". That was his favorite line, you know, what I mean. And so, I don't think Bibi's thought this through at all. I think there's been a rush to embrace Trump in all of this that is madness to me. But I do believe the two state solutions is basically over. I think it … AXELROD: … do you think that it was wrong for the U.S. to abstain at the United Nation? FRIEDMAN: Oh no. He's absolutely right. It was only right now to try to administer one last jolt of reality. But if I were Obama and Kerry, I want to be on record as we truly tried. I thought Kerry's speech was actually a remarkable historical document because he went through the whole record in a very balanced way. Now, we are here for two reasons. We're here because on Bibi Netanyahu on all talked about wanting to have a two state solution and never once put a plan on the table. You know that because the president had to deal with that for last eight year. So, what is that really say? But we're also here, I have to say x because of Palestinians. Basically they had a leader, Salam Fayyad, who I was a very … AXELROD: A lot of people really … (CROSSTALK) FRIEDMAN: … and what was his idea, it was this be like Zionist. Let's builder institutions first, judges, courts, police, economy, governing institutions and then once we've got the institutions, and then we declare a state. And the current Palestinian leadership pushed him out because they are much more comfortable with that kind of corrupt cronyism you see in every Arab country today. And unfortunately Israelis and we I would say let that happen and we shouldn't have. We and the Europeans because Europeans, you know, pay for the occupation. They actually fund the Palestinian Authority and the European states said if Fayyad goes, our money goes. I think that he was that important. I actually coined the term. I called Fayyadism. Whole different kinds of Arab leadership that it says judge me by my performance,


not by whether I am against the Jews, whether I'm against the Americans, whether I'm shouting louder than him, judge me on whether I get the sewer is fix, the road are clean, the lights working and the police and the jobs and Fiyyadism died. And so the Palestinians, if I were the prime minister of Israel today, I wouldn't be giving them a state. There are no positions to govern themselves, if Israel got on the west bank. Hamas is there tomorrow. And so, you've obviously you got a nurture something totally different now. But I would say to Bibi, "You won, you won. You won, you are now the father of one state Israel." And that's how I like to refer to him. I like to know referred to him as the Prime Minister of Israel Palestine. AXELROD: What's the future for Israel as a -- how can Israel be a Jewish state, and a democratic state in a large numbers of growing numbers of Palestinians and Arab? FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, going back to Beirut to Jerusalem, I wrote Israel wants to three things. It wants the state in all the land of Israel. It wants a Jewish state, and wants a democratic state. In the real world, you only get two out of three. You can be an all the land of Israel and be Jewish, but you can't be democratic. And you can be in all the land of Israel and Democratic but you can't be Jewish. And you can be Jewish and democratic, but only if you don't take all the land. And they have to choose, and they have refused to choose. And the essence of leadership is choosing and is a great failure of leadership. So what happens when leadership fails is the most dynamic force in the society takes, it wins because it has the most energy in that settler's movement. So, they just keep on winning, dragging Israel deeper and deeper. And Netanyahu, as I say, is a leader who is forever dog paddling in the middle of the Rubicon. [00:30:05] He never crosses. He's always dog paddling the middle saying, "I'm coming. I'm coming over. I'm coming, I'm coming." He's actually just dog paddling. He stays always in the middle of the Rubicon. AXELROD: But he's managed to stay afloat for several decades. FRIEDMAN: He managed to stay afloat. He's probably the longest-serving prime minister, maybe already is more than Ben-Gurion. And, David, if he retires tomorrow and you said you got to write his political biography, honest to God I don't know what I'd say other than that he… AXELROD: That he will survive for… FRIEDMAN: He survived. AXELROD: Yes. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. He survived at the -- (CROSSTALK)


AXELROD: Did you see anybody -- Last question on this. Do you see anybody emerging? I mean, one last time, though he was in a weakened state… FRIEDMAN: Right, absolutely. AXELROD: … in part because there was no real opposition. No figure who could, at one's point the way in a different direction and still give the-- FRIEDMAN: Incredible. AXELROD: … assurance on security. FRIEDMAN: You need to be ambassador for peace. And the left in Israel hasn't been able to produce ambassador for peace. By the way, you know this -- AXELROD: But there are a lot of people out of the military, there are a lot people out of the intelligent sector there. FRIEDMAN: Well, what Bibi did was pass a law that said ex-military people can't go into politics not for much longer, I forget, it's like four or five years. So he sidelined all the natural rivals for him. Labor is a is like so many center-left parties today kind of lost into where it's going. Not to the right has much dynamism either, but people trust him at the gut level that he won't sell off the stage. And he lived in a crazy neighborhood. AXELROD: One of the issues is that all of these bigger-than-life revolutionary figures have passed from the scene. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. AXELROD: And so there's no Sharon. FRIEDMAN: That's right, there's no Sharon, there's none of them. And so we got these midgets. AXELROD: Right. FRIEDMAN: And the result is just drift. So the drift is toward one state. And I'm afraid that's what it's going to become. AXELROD: This touches on another issue and it gets to your Iraq point. And that is we -- as Americans, we have this notion that democracy is something that everyone should yearn for and everyone should practice. And I, you know, I mentioned my father was an immigrant. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: So I cherish.


FRIEDMAN: That's right. Absolutely, yeah. AXELROD: I cherish it. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: But it requires its hard work to establish those institutional pillars that are… (CROSSTALK) FRIEDMAN: The liberty, that's right. AXELROD: … she work. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. AXELROD: And what we saw in Iraq where we had great aspirations for creating democracy that tribe overwhelmed those Democratic impulses. And that seems to be true across the region. FRIEDMAN: So, you know, the Iraq war was probably my biggest mistake as a journalist, some would say. I feel nothing but pain and regret for the terrible human cost, American and Iraq, and the terrible treasure that we have spent there. But I also -- I'm not going to apologize acts or feeling that pluralism, you know, some kind of democratic -- it's the only way to go forward there, and so I was wrong in thinking that it was possible. I am not wrong in thinking that it's necessary. And it's even more today. AXELROD: Necessary but not possible. It's not a happy… FRIEDMAN: Right. And not a happy place to be. But I'm just saying that if you want to act seriously, I say to people, about Iraq, I couldn't look my life-- had I been against the war, I wouldn't be carrying this terrible sense of real guilt I feel for having supported something, you know? AXELROD: Well, you're not alone, I'm sure. FRIEDMAN: No, I'm not but I want to be very honest about it. You know, I feel terrible about it but at the same time I look at this region and -- of the big mistake I made, is thinking that the alternative to autocracy was democracy. And it turned out the alternative to autocracy was disorder. And that's really what we've seen Syria, it's what we've seen in Iraq, and that you need a much more gradualist evolution. Now, the Bush administration -- and I'm not excusing myself for this, but they mess this up 12 ways to Sunday. I mean, disbanding the Iraqi Army, you know, the craziest things they did motivated by the way by ideology and some of what you see now in Trump, just a different ideology. De-Ba'athification, the way they did, they basically completely… AXELROD: They destroyed any institution…


FRIEDMAN: The destroyed the institutions and stripped the Sunni Muslims of any dignity. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: Well, you've got a -- I mean, and he wonder, you know, but it's a painful period for our country much more importantly and most importantly for our country for Iraqis and just professionally worst mistake I made. [00:34:57] AXELROD: John Brennan was here a couple weeks ago and he -- just last week, actually. And he said that he -- and he was involved, obviously, from the beginning there. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: He said that the history of the Middle East, at least where we are today would've been significantly different. How different would have been had we not made the decision to go and take out Saddam Hussein? FRIEDMAN: I think Iraq would look exactly like Syria today. I think there would've been a Shiite revolt. They tried after the 1991, you know, invasion of Kuwait, the Shiites tried to revolt and that's when we let -- that was first Bush administration we let Saddam uses helicopters to mow them down. I have every reason and confidence to believe that what happened in Syria, remember, which we had nothing to do with, happened spontaneously in the wake of the Arab Spring. I have every reason to believe the same thing would have happened in Iraq. AXELROD: And just on Syria… (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: I want to turn to your book. You talk about painful things. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: I know that as the president leaves, the developments in Syria are something that he will think about for the rest of his life. Do you think that there was a different path in Syria that would've produced a significantly different result? FRIEDMAN: So my evolution on -- I went to an evolution on this and including with him. And we had ultimately a falling out over it because I, at first, was because we're having the conversation in this order. Because of my experience in Iraq, I just said I'm never going to advocate putting American troops anyway. Yeah. Not only because it went so bad, because I learned, you know, we don't even know what we were doing, you know what I mean? It's in some of these places. AXELROD: And the question is what happens once you're there? FRIEDMAN: Exactly.


AXELROD: How do you get out… FRIEDMAN: Exactly. AXELROD: … if there's no institutional… FRIEDMAN: Basis to do it. AXELROD: … foundation, yeah. FRIEDMAN: But I'll tell you when I changed my mind and a couple of encounters with the president, you know, we went back and forth on this. When I saw the refugee outflow from Europe starting to destroy -- when I saw the refugee outflow from Syria starting to destroy Europe, and that massive refugee outflow from Syria and Iraq, coupled with what was going on in Africa because we also uncorked Libya, Libya was like a cork on Africa, and those two things I believe have had a huge impact in weakening the fabric of the European Union and producing all this nationalist populists' backlash around Europe. And so where I came out was we should be -- I stepped back and said, wait a minute. We had 300,000 troops in Europe for 50 years, because we thought Europe is the other great center of democratic capitalism, was a strategic asset for the United States, literally our wingman in the world. If we put 5,000 troops in a no-fly zone in Western Syria and 5,000 troops by way as NATO, it wouldn't even have to be all American to control the coast of Libya and create some order there for the refugees, and by the way, with no exit plan. We didn't have an exit plan when we put 300,000 troops in Germany. We said we're going to be here as long as we have to be. AXELROD: But they weren't in a war zone? FRIEDMAN: No, no, they weren't. And there would've been losses. But, you know, to protect Europe, I think that that would have been a really a valuable investment. And that's when I parted company with the president. AXELROD: Yeah, yeah. FRIEDMAN: I think that… AXELROD: He would, of course, argue that 5,000 -- you would've had to ultimately employ more troops and you would've been in a situation where you had this dystopia that you were governing… FRIEDMAN: Right, that's right. AXELROD: … essentially. FRIEDMAN: And by the way-- AXELROD: And the reason I think that that was so troubling was because this country was


scarred by, you know, more than a decade-- FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And I know -- and I just want to say, by the way, I have enormous respect for his side of the argument too. Where he and I parted company is that I happen to think everyone I could make his argument I think as well as he could and he could probably make… AXELROD: I'll probably invite you to that. FRIEDMAN: That's right. And he could make my argument as well as I could. AXELROD: Yes, yes. FRIEDMAN: The one thing that bothered me, I have to say, is he presented my side of the argument as a bunch of foreign policy hacks who have been in Washington too long, that it was like we were the blob, you know, the kind of foreign policy blob that always wants to intervene. And he was the smart guy. He -- And that was where -- I resented that just at the intellectual level that I have respect for his side of the argument and he advance (ph) very little respect for ours. And I think there were real issues. For me, this European question, that I think the weakening of the EU is partly on his tab. I mean, it's also a huge problem for the EU is 90 percent on them, but I think it's partly on Obama's tab, also. So all I was saying was this is an impossible choice, but don't tell me I'm a stupid foreign policy blob just because I come out here, you know what I mean? And that -- And I resented that actually. [00:40:11] AXELROD: Well, I know that the president is going to have a lot of time to listen to the podcast and hopefully you have expressed yourself directly to him because he'll be listening to… FRIEDMAN: That's right. AXELROD: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back with Tom Friedman. I want to talk about this new book of yours. We could talk for hours about each of your books, but this new one really struck me because I've been really, really concerned about the sense that technology in particular, but all -- there are number of forces afoot that are accelerating at such a pace that they're outstripping our ability to understand them. FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: And to grapple with them and to adjust and adapt to them. And you lay this out in extraordinarily thoughtful ways in this book. So, talk a little bit about that about where you think we are and what is the way out. FRIEDMAN: Right. So I think we're in the middle of three nonlinear accelerations all at the same time with the three largest forces on the planet, which in the book identifies the market, Mother Nature, and Moore's Law.


So Mother Nature is climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth. Moore's Law is that the speed and power microchips will double every 24 months, which is really the driver of all technology change, named after Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel, he coined this 1965. And it's basically held up for 52 years. And the market for me is digital globalization. Not your grandfather's globalization that's containers on ships, but everything that's now -- like this podcast being digitized and globalized. People I know will listen to this, you know, way beyond our borders here. So I think those-- AXELROD: Amount to the area. FRIEDMAN: I hope so. And so, I think these accelerations, they aren't just changing the world. They're fundamentally reshaping the world. AXELROD: I think we live in revolutionary… FRIEDMAN: I do too. And there we're reshaping politics, geopolitics, ethics, the workplace, and community. And so the first part of the book is about these accelerations, how they work, and the second part is about how they're reshaping these realms not to your point -- my favorite quotes in the book is from John Kelly. He ran the Watson IBM cognitive computer project. And at one point he said to me, you know, Tom, when you're buying a new car, it always comes with a sticker on the rearview mirror. It says objects in your rearview may be closer than they appear. He said that actually belongs in your front windshield. It's what's coming at us now is closer than you think. And the other thing that really struck me is I began living the book in this sense. I felt like I had a butterfly net and I was chasing a butterfly. And every time I got close, it moved. So I had to call Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel, three different times just to make sure in the space of three… (CROSSTALK) FRIEDMAN: Things were changing so fast. I talked to Doug Cutting, the founder of Hadoop, at least six times in writing this book. Chris Wanstrath, the founder of GitHub, I visited them twice. And every time I went back, it was like I had an odometer in the book. We have 12 million users, we have 13 million users, we have -- So I was actually living the acceleration myself and I finally had to close the book. Trap it in ink and paper because it would just would've kept, you know, just going and going and going. It's that fast. AXELROD: Yeah. And who knows how long ink and paper will be around. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. And so to your point exactly, I think we're at a point right now where the pace of change is -- and I like the way you put it because it's not only faster than societies, governance, and individuals can adapt, it can even understand.


AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: When you talk about genomics today and some of the stuff and bioinformatics, some of the things that are happening today, they're just jaw-dropping. AXELROD: Well, you know, one example is this issue of trade that played so big in this election. I know you're a free-trader. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. AXELROD: And, you know, my view is that globalization is here. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: I mean, there are things that-- FRIEDMAN: Cushion the worst and get the best out of it. AXELROD: You know, you're not going to reverse some trends. FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: But the fact is we're losing more jobs, good paying jobs to mechanization, automation… FRIEDMAN: Right. AXELROD: And I don't know that there's -- you know, it's easier if you're political candidate to say that China is going to take your job than to say that robot is going to take your job -- FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. AXELROD: -- because how do you organize against the robots? FRIEDMAN: And in fact, it is 90 percent about automation and 10 percent about trade maximum. First of all, I don't have an easy answer. I think we're at -- And so I don't want to suggest that I do and yet I look up and we are 4.7 percent unemployment. So there's -- clearly it's very uneven in the sense that parts of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as we learned in this election that had been very much dependent on the industrial economy have been damaged. [00:45:05] There's no question about it. But I go up to Minneapolis, my hometown, 2.9 percent unemployment. So something's going on. That's also positive. And what I think is we need to really understand what are the positive things and inflate them and what are the negative ones and try to cushion them. AXELROD: Well, I think, also, anticipate -- you know, we were chatting earlier at Fareed


Zakaria here a few months ago and he talked about some driverless cars. FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: And the fact that they're coming online by the end of this decade. And there are millions and millions of people in this country who make their living driving. FRIEDMAN: Driving cars, yeah. AXELROD: So where are they going in this economy… FRIEDMAN: Right. AXELROD: … and what thought are we putting into that seems to me to be really what our campaign should be about. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And so, it's funny, I was in the airport two days ago waiting just to go to New York and a guy walks up to me and says, Mr. Friedman, I run -- I'm CEO of -- and I don't remember -- a big motel chain. And he just came up to me, just out of the blue and said I want you to answer this question. When we have driverless cars and you'll be able to get in your car in Washington, program your car to take you to Fifth Avenue in New York and you can sleep the whole way, it means you don't have to stay in my motel. And I thought -- I just said, "I never thought of that, but I thought it was a very profound question," you know? So, people are really now starting to think radical thoughts. AXELROD: My advice is to find a way to program your car to stay away from the Midtown… FRIEDMAN: Right. Yeah, absolutely. (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: … from Trump Tower, but … FRIEDMAN: It's -- So, the answer is I don't know. All I know is we've been here before. And every time we're here before, we found a creative solution. What is scary about this moment is when we all left the farm there were factories. When we all left the factories, there were offices and service jobs and knowledge jobs. AXELROD: Yes. FRIEDMAN: And so what comes after knowledge and services? It's not immediately obvious. The argument I made in the column the other day with my a friend Dov Seidman is that we're going from an economy built around hands to one built around heads to one little -- more and more be built around hearts, that it would be about all the things that connect human hearts to one another. And it will be a very different economy. AXELROD: So what is that -- how does -- give me -- help me picture what that means.


FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: So the example I gave in that column was the fastest growing restaurant chain in America, according to Entrepreneur Magazine in 2015 is called Paint Nite. And Paint Nite does paint by numbers classes for adults in bars, because it turns out that, A, people love to have a creative expression and they don't like to do it alone. They enjoy being in a class taught by an artist in a bar have a drink, socialize and it's just a little example. But the teachers of those classes, the artists, they have to do the drawing that you paint from, they make basically $1,000 a week for three hours work. AXELROD: The last time we had an industrial revolution, a progressive era grew out of that. FRIEDMAN: Right. AXELROD: And government played a role in dealing with a hard edge -- FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: -- of that change providing certain protections for workers making high school education universal and so on. And I think we probably need a new iteration of the progressive era, but we have less confidence in government as an institution which has been eroded steadily for the last 30 or 40 years. FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: What role does government have to play in all of this? FRIEDMAN: So I'm a huge fan of something that President Obama I thought, you know, stimulated very well. I like these race-to-the-top programs. Say I don't know where this is going, but we need to think about how we build more jobs around heart. Here's a pile of money. Whichever school system, university community comes up with the best ideas, so it's government acting as catalyzer. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: Not saying we know what it is and now we're going to put it down. And I thought Obama did a great job with that in the Department of Education-- AXELROD: Also in energy. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. He did great at that. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: I think there was -- You know, the thing that frustrates me, this is an aside about Obama, is, you know, we had arguments about this. Because I said to him, I think you're the


worst communicating president I've ever covered. AXELROD: I'm sure he took that… FRIEDMAN: Yes, he did. But I think he's got so much better story than he was ever -- than he ever told himself. I voted for Obama twice. I do not want my money back. I think he was a -- he's successful administration, given the constraints. And I wish people -- How many people know that he doubled mileage standards? AXELROD: Right. FRIEDMAN: And how-- AXELROD: Or doubled -- or to help catalyze a doubling of renewable energy. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. I mean -- and by the way, these, when you double -- when you tell the auto industry, you got to improve 3 percent every year or 5 percent, whatever it was, the amount of innovation you drive and all kinds of things you'll never see, batteries, efficiency, you know, energy… [00:50:00] AXELROD: It wasn't just -- health care IT is another example-- FRIEDMAN: Exactly, where they did that. They did so much more. That was really valuable and there are things I disagreed with. It's not like I'm in the tank for this. I say this is a citizen. I'm so glad he did these things. They're really important, but it never got conveyed, you know? AXELROD: Well, I should be in good conscience. I should mention that I was there for two years. And I was a communications person, so … (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: … some of the blame falls on me FRIEDMAN: Yeah. But I think that this is administration that has a lot to be proud of. And things that are really important to me. By the way, TPP, why am I so supportive of TPP? Because if you're a liberal, Obama delivered the ultimate liberal trade pack. It has labor standards in it, labor union organizing rights, has amazing environmental standards, and basically focuses on opening markets to our strength of technology and innovation of science and software. If people denounce this thing without knowing what was in it, you know. AXELROD: Yeah. You -- the closing chapters of your book as you mentioned, take you back to Saint Louis Park -- FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: And talk a little bit about that, and the notion of community and why that's important.


FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, part of it began as where I -- I'm 63 now. I'm at the end of my career basically, I mean, I don't when I'll stop writing but I'm not the beginning anymore, that's for sure. And I've often reflected when was the happiest? When would I've been the happiest in my life? And I have a wonderful marriage and families. So, that's beyond that. I mean, it's when I was part of the community whether is that little community in Beirut I told you about. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: They're all in titanic together. Whether, you know, it was the community I lived in Jerusalem, I saw New York Times reported. Whether I was at community I grew up with. That's might be the happiest. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: And I was most happy -- happy is time of life again, outside my marriage and family and everything that I derive from that, is those 18 years I grew up in Saint Louis Park. And went to school, public school, the same kids, all 18 years, they're still my best friends, they still ride along, you know. AXELROD: Yeah. I have the same thing. FRIEDMAN: And that just puts a smile on my face. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: And the thing that was -- AXELROD: Because you have some pretty extra -- FRIEDMAN: I mean -- yeah. I grew up in Saint Louis Park, you know, and the same sort of rough decade, went to the Hebrew school or lived in the same neighborhood with the Cone brothers, Al Frank, and Norm Ornstein, Michael Sandel (ph), Sharon Isbin, the guitarist, Peggy Ornstein, Allen Wiseman (ph), the Hilton (ph) brothers, Dan Wilson who wrote "Someone Like You" with Adele. It was an amazing community and I would -- and we're all -- AXELROD: It must have been a hell of a talent show. FRIEDMAN: It was. And we are products -- Al Frank, he went to private school. He was the only one I knew who went to private school. We were -- it was a time -- AXELROD: You just heard his political career but go ahead. FRIEDMAN: That's right. It was a time when the public had such honor attached to it. We have amazing public parks, we have amazing -- I played hockey, after school, in lighted public hockey rinks. I went to amazing public schools. The only journalism course I've ever taken was


that room 313 in Saint Louis Park High, and not because I was that good but because my teacher was that good. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: We had an amazing public education at the University of Minnesota. We all as Michael Sandel points out in the book, you know, we all went to the same twin stadium, they were no sky boxes. We all sat in the same rain. We all ate the same soggy hotdogs. And that time -- AXELROD: Tony Oliva (ph). FRIEDMAN: Tony Oliva, right, Peru -- AXELROD: Carmen (inaudible). FRIEDMAN: Yeah, that's right -- AXELROD: Yes., FRIEDMAN: But I grew up, that has such an effect on me because I grew in a time and place where politics work. And I took that optimism into the world, that because I saw politics work and I saw partisanship. But I saw partisanship at the end of the day that said you've got to come together and compromise. AXELROD: Minnesota had a great tradition of that as well, you know. One of my earliest assignments as a reporter when I was in night side -- FRIEDMAN: Yeah. AXELROD: -- they called me one night, I was deathly and all this. And it was the first time I ever go is calling him sick and they said, Hubert Humpries is going to die tonight and we want you to go to Minnesota -- FRIEDMAN: Oh, interesting. AXELROD: -- and I said, I'll go. I'll go. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely, yeah. AXELROD: And I went. And what was so striking about it was every single person I talked to said, "Yeah, I knew Hubert, you know." FRIEDMAN: Hubert, absolutely. AXELROD: And he knew me. And there was affection for him and a respect for men, it was like 13 below zero --


FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. AXELROD: -- and people lined up through the night -- FRIEDMAN: And they were Republicans and Democrats and -- AXELROD: Exactly. FRIEDMAN: Yeah. So, you know, I was just up there for my book too when I spoke at the West Minister, the lecture series, it's a big partisan church in downtown Minneapolis. [00:55:02] And Vice President Mondale came and honored me and sat in the first row. And every time I see Fritz he always says, you know, I still remember I was speaking at the synagogue and your little mom came up and said, "Do you know my son?" AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: And that day, it was just that kind of place -- (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: And what is your life today? FRIEDMAN: The amazing thing is that it still has a lot of those features but it's infected by the partisanship more. But I'm profiling the book this thing called The Itasca Group which is an amazing community leadership institution that's evolved there where you have the leaders of, you know, Minneapolis Saint Paul as 19 Fortune 500 companies. So, the leaders of these companies, the leaders of the philanthropic community, the leaders of the local education, the university and public school system and local politicians. They meet every two weeks under the brand of Itasca which was this lake in Northern Minnesota where the old elite families used to vacation every summer. And they, you know, a lot of way they run the state. I mean, they don't run it but they really direct it. AXELROD: And they talk through problems and approaches and ideas. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And they do it, you know, when Tim Pawlenty wouldn't sign the transportation bill, a big issue in Minnesota because you've got a lot of rural, you know, as urban tension. Itasca which is Republicans and Democrats, I mean, they are business (inaudible). They got four Republicans to split off and sign in it. And so, don't mess with Itasca up there because they really believe in this. And their symbol is a dining room table, a round dining -- but there are not sides. AXELROD: So, anyway, your answer to this accelerating forces, these massive forces in some ways it has to go small, not big. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. Well, the argument is that that the proper political unit in 21st century


is not going to be the nation state. We need armies, a Federal Reserve with a currency. You know, we still need a national government to do social security but it's too slow and can't adapt quickly enough. We still need -- oh, sorry. In the single family at the other hand is way too frail against these forces and too many are single parent. The argument of the book is that it's the healthy community that's close enough to people and adaptive enough in order to manage these accelerations. And it's what's going to have to evolve. And what I found in researching not just in Minnesota but around the country is there is an amazing amount of innovation there around this. AXELROD: Yeah. And in that sense, it goes back to your point about government as a catalyst. FRIEDMAN: Exactly, to bring together business community, the public education institutions, the local government and the philanthropist together. That is the coalition I believe that will govern most effectively in the 21st century. AXELROD: Well, I agree with you about the value of community and I think I always say one of the reasons I so enjoyed being a newspaper man and working in a newsroom and campaigns, and now here at the Institute of Politics is to be surrounded by people -- FRIEDMAN: Exactly. AXELROD: -- and working together towards something. FRIEDMAN: Who know you and, you know, and so resonates with me what you said. And, you know, when I think of the Trump administration and -- AXELROD: We were headed to such a nice -- FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I know. But I just want to say one thing, you know. Because friends of mine -- a couple friends of mine have said -- been asked to do senior positions and called me and I said -- these are Republican friends and I said, "Look, as a citizen I'm begging you to take the job." AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: "I'm begging you. I'm begging you to take the job". As your friend, here is what I worry about. I don't see a community there. What is the essence of a community? You know, I'd like to think, if I make a mistake at the New York Times they're not going to throw me overboard. I've been there 37 years. You know, I lot of friends there, a lot of equity and that's what -- that's part of what community is, we cover for you, not cover for a mistake but we -- AXELROD: Everybody got everybody's back. FRIEDMAN: Yeah, everybody has got everybody's back, exactly. And I look at that administration and I just think of the whole Kellyanne Conway thing with Governor Mitt Romney, and how -- here, she way sort of basically stabbing him in the back publicly while he's


auditioning or being auditioned for a job. AXELROD: At their request. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And so, I see that and what happens when you don't have a community? AXELROD: It was interesting why we say just (inaudible). What's interesting about that, she was highly critical of him for the very tough things she said about Trump. FRIEDMAN: Right. AXELROD: But she, herself, had run an anti-Trump -- FRIEDMAN: For Cruz. AXELROD: --- for Ted Cruz before she joined Trump. FRIEDMAN: Exactly, exactly, yeah. AXELROD: So, by that measure she shouldn't be there. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. And it's some -- what happens when you do that. And this gets us back to Minnesota in Saint Louis Park. Your road trust. If people don't trust -- if there are no trusts in the room people don't dare to try anything, you know. AXELROD: Right. FRIEDMAN: I'll tell you a very quick story if we have time that I have in the book, it's about Saint Louis Park, my little town. So, in 2009 in the book, the thing is 2009, they decided they're going to be the first town in Minnesota to have free public Wi-Fi. So, they contract out for a public Wi-Fi towers to be set up all over my little town. [01:00:02] And it goes to a company in Minneapolis, it's a solar powered Wi-Fi towers. They install it, and the system completely fails, the first winter the ice freezes on the solar panels -- AXELROD: Yeah. I was going to say that's a tough thing when you're in Minnesota. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. So, they have to take it down. And I interviewed the mayor and the CTO and the town manager about this. They're all telling the story. And the CTO, it's all in the book where he had a heart attack over this ultimately. But he said, the day we announced this at the city hall that we're taking it down, I went to lunch at the Harvest Moon Café near city hall, and I walked in. And soon after I walked in a guy came up to me and said, you're the Wi-Fi guy, aren't you? He said, "Well, yes, I'm." And the guy said, "Too bad, that didn't work, what are we going to try next?" Now, that is the sound of trust, OK? Compare that, Axe, you know just what I'm talking about, the Solyndra (ph).


AXELROD: Right. FRIEDMAN: Washington D.C., can say on a much bigger scale, president try something in solar. We fund, it's called venture, you know, investing. What is the reaction in Washington, who can we destroy, who can we convict, how can we use this against the other party. Everything that destroys trust is what we do. And so, that's what makes Saint Louis Park and all these healthy communities is that interaction between leadership and trust. And when that trust is there you try all kinds of things -- AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: -- and we're losing that. So, I think of that Trump administration I think if I'm in that administration I just want to say one thing, if I try something and it doesn't work is he going to tweet about me? What if he tweets about me? He doesn't realize what he's doing. AXELROD: Right. FRIEDMAN: I mean, the message is I'm I going to get a tweet? Holy macro. No, I'm not afraid of a tweet because I actually work for an organization that buys ink by the barrel. So, we can fight back. We have our own platforms. But if I'm someone who doesn't have that I'd be terrified. AXELROD: Well, this I'm sure will be an ongoing conversation over the next four years. But I fervently hope that we do lift up that sense of community and find our sense of national community again -- FRIEDMAN: Because it's still there. You see it every time, you know, every time and this is the thought I'd want and done. You know, in the few times that's over the last eight years, where Republicans and Democrats did get together on something. And I can't remember exactly a few but there were few times where they got together. You could feel the mood of the country change. AXELROD: Yes. FRIEDMAN: You could feel the mood of the -- AXELROD: I can tell you, after the midterm elections since 2010, there was a large package that was passed in partisans because both the Republicans and Democrats were afraid of what was coming next. FRIEDMAN: Yes. AXELROD: And a lot of significant things happened there in terms of not just on taxes but the end of don't ask don't tell -- FRIEDMAN: That's right. AXELROD: -- and number of other things happened in that period and you could see the mood


of the country -- FRIEDMAN: Yeah, government moves at the speed trust. AXELROD: Yeah. FRIEDMAN: You know, I didn't say it to somebody smarter than me. But whenever you saw it and what does it tell you? It tells you that really what the American people feel is we've been children of two permanently divorcing parents. And there's just always -- and once in a while when they stop, they sit down in the couch and invites you in, you know, and they actually get something. That's what people want. I don't think people want this. I don't buy it. I just don't -- and maybe that's the naive Minnesota kid in me that I just can't get out but that whole macro up, you know -- AXELROD: Well, it's related to the -- it's not related to every else we've talked about because as long as there's a perception that things are out of control, and that people are being let down it is father for (inaudible) for worst who to want to exploit that sense of anxiety. FRIEDMAN: That's where were at. AXELROD: Yeah. Well, we're going to talk about this I'm sure for a long time and hopefully we'll end up as one big Saint Louis Park. But Tom Friedman, the book is thank you for being late and optimist guide to thriving in the age of accelerations. Thank you for offering an optimist guide that's badly needed right now and for decades and decades of brilliant work. FRIEDMAN: Thank you. This was a real treat. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you for listening to "The Axe Files", part of the CNN Podcast Network. Fore more episodes of "The Axe Files", visit cnn.com/podcast and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite app. And for more programming from the University of Chicago-Institute of Politics, visit politics.uchicago.edu.

The Axe Files - Ep. 114: Thomas Friedman · Politics and CNN, "The Axe Files" with your host, David...

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Transcript of The Axe Files - Ep. 114: Thomas Friedman · Politics and CNN, "The Axe Files" with your host, David...