Hi, I'm Herman Hartman, and today on Indigo Studio, we welcome a man who's been at the center of power from Congress to city Hall to the white House to the world stage.

We're talking about Rahm Emanuel.

His career reads like a modern political roadmap.

Former congressman, senior adviser to President Clinton, chief of staff to President Obama, mayor, City of Chicago, and most recently, the United States Ambassador to Japan.

He's been called bold.

He's been called brilliant, blunt, but always effective.

We're going to discuss with him today.

Leadership, democracy, diplomacy, and the evolving role of America in the world.

N'digo Studio, N'digo Studio Funding for this program has been provided by Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Community Trust.

CineCity Studios, Lamborghinis Chicago, Gold Coast and Downers Grove.

Commonwealth Edison Broadway Chicago and Illinois Health Plan get covered.

N'digo Studio So do I call you Honorable Rahm Emanuel?

You should hear what they call me at home.

Oh, anything.

Anything will be an upgrade.

Oh, sick.

Rahm, Yeah.

So, Rahm, you have held many leadership roles, many leadership spots.

You've done some courageous things.

You've messed up.

How do these roles compare in terms of your leadership?

Same leadership, different leadership.

Oh yeah.

Well.

So one is, I would say different leadership because at one time you're the mayor.

Another time you're the chief of staff working for leader.

But you have to lead the staff.

You know, I always joke in the white House, there's only one title or one position that has two titles.

Chief of staff and sometimes your chief.

And sometimes your staff.

You just got to know.

But so a step back, I will say to you, when I, when we're talking about a family dinners, leadership, in my view, is described by knowing what what you're why you're doing, what you're doing.

And then being ruthless and tough enough to get it done.

If you look through history, specifically American history, the really effective leaders have a intellectual roadmap and then they have a stamina and capacity to get there.

If through sheer, you know, they're, you're going into 70 mile an hour at a. Yeah.

I mean, you take a look at Lincoln, look at Ronald Reagan, look at FDR.

Look, I mean, look at the great leaders.

Transformational, not transitional.

They have the capacity.

They know where they want to go, and then they have the stomach and the capacity and the grit to get there.

That's leadership.

And then, you know, when I was ambassador, I led a team of 800 people.

When I was mayor, I was obviously a much bigger, workforce.

But you also led a city, etc.. Your chief of staff, that's a different role.

But when you were I was a congressman, led the effort to get Nancy Pelosi, speaker, win the majority after 12 years.

So each of them required different qualities even during the day.

But one quality describes leadership, in my view.

Oh, one kind of definition.

What lessons you learned in leadership?

All of those roles.

cumulative.

What's the what's the things that you've learned?

Well, A number of things.

When you have, you know, so if you're preparing for a meeting or, well, I said, let me go down it this way.

One even if you think you know the answer, listen more.

You may learn more about your own answer.

Two.

Hire really strong, effective people.

And give them the loyalty to execute and take risk.

Too often people don't take risk.

And you want to give them the loyalty, the confidence to take risk.

Third year, when you're articulating something, you're both speaking to an outside and inside audience, and they hear different things in that effort.

So those would be some of the things that I think of is sense of, learning leadership.

I mean, the other thing is, I mean, when you're trying to pass legislation like we were trying to do on health care and stuff like that, you try to, I was a former member.

And so the, my colleagues, we were trying to get through the house knew me as somebody who watch out for them politically.

And this was seen as a tough vote.

So I had to give that was a different type of leadership.

I was providing a different type of council.

So it's different things at different places.

And you got to it's like a Swiss Army knife.

Yeah.

Oh, you got to know which bullet, which blade or which scissors to bring up.

Let's talk about Democratic Party today.

Where are we?

What do we need to do?

I don't know why, but we like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.

Win and win again.

And then we unlearned the lessons of their victory and go back into where we are today.

And then we have to learn the lessons all over again.

I don't know why that is, but it is.

There's a pattern to, President Clinton's victory after Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis lost.

There's a pattern to, President Obama's not only win, but his reelect, as well as true for, President Clinton and I kind of.

There's a lot more to it to unpack.

But middle class economics, middle class values to the part of the question you asked about what happened is we got away from middle class values, as I jokingly say sometimes, but this is to make a point.

We weren't very good at the kitchen table issues.

We weren't really good in the family room, and we only occupied the bathroom, and it's the smallest room in the house.

And so that is a real problem.

And we are a party in our DNA of acceptance.

But we became a party of advocacy and that's not what people wanted.

And two, we were off kilter.

And it is seen as an a set of issues.

And I thought I'll be receiving an award today from the Golden Apple on education.

But look, we brought the cultural wars to our schools.

And that's, you know, we took the name of Abraham Lincoln off of a high school in San Francisco.

Did and didn't really care whether the kids knew Abraham Lincoln was an American giant.

That's like losing the plot.

We argued about bathroom access, and we weren't really concerned about classroom excellence.

Today, we just about a month ago, the nation's report card Nape.

It's a test came out, and two thirds of our kids are not doing reading and math at grade level.

Now you and I are sitting here, we know about more about the president's position on windmills, more about his position, his views on Cracker Barrel.

And he has never once talked about the fact that two thirds of our children, our future, can't read or do math at grade level.

Nobody from the National Governors Association has called for an emergency meeting.

our kids are failing, but we are failing our our kids.

And so to me, the party Jimmy Carter sets up the Department of Education, bill Clinton creates public school choice and teachers of excellence.

Barack Obama creates his race to the top.

We just went through Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will Well, I like both of them, but you can't tell me what their education policy was, except for they were against charters.

And we've now lost our not only our political advantage, we have no policy on that.

That's a core piece.

So that's a piece of why we lost.

And to me, get back to basically being seen as a fighter for the American people, who it is true, their backs are against the wall financially and economically.

And I say this and let me, you and I were talking earlier about my kids are going to be fine.

Two parent family loving home went to good not just went to good schools, but are achieving things and coming into their own.

That's the.

But we don't score.

Whether 10% of the kids can get the American dream, we score, whether it's accessible to all Americans.

And that's not and we're not scoring it.

Right.

And what has happened over the last 30 years is the ladder got pulled up owning a home, affording an education, health care, retirement.

And the latter got pulled up.

Our job is to push the ladder down so everybody can get a chance to get on it.

What do you think of Trump?

Eliminated.

Eliminated.

The whole federal level of education.

I'm not a governor, but I know what governor Bill Clinton would do.

Who worked with Ronald Reagan on education reform.

I'd call for a national emergency meeting of, governors to meet with the, administration right now on how to developing a blueprint and a roadmap on how to return our reading scores and math scores.

Now, I just wanted to be honest, unlike in past instances, Mississippi has a miracle going on.

A lot of those of us who are nerds, and if they were then in 2013, I think that's the right benchmark here.

They were 49th in reading attainment.

They are now ninth now, as somebody who made some tough decision to go from 49th to ninth is no small feat.

And so they've proven how to do it.

That should become a roadmap to not only encourage, but push every state to adopt their reading program, their teacher training program, and their accountability standards.

Now, I happen to think Doctor Janice Jackson here in Chicago and I have written about this, actually, when you look back at it, reinvented the high school education.

But on the pre-K to eighth, there's a roadmap.

And what's impressive about Mississippi is every one of the smarty pants at Harvard and Yale would tell you that those kids, not that zip code, not that family income, but they went for 49th and ninth.

So they said, don't predict or don't read a book by its cover.

No kid is a guaranteed failure.

They can't succeed with the right type of education.

And I'm going to go on and on about that because, you know, I care about this, but if you look no great country has achieved greatness without having an education.

What do you what do you think of Trump and how do you not not what do you think of Trump?

Think of Trump.

But how do we recover.

Well.

From the damage of Trump, from the change of Trump, from the authoritarianism?

Trump.

Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, I think my worry.

So there's like a lot of layers.

My one worry is that once the genie's out of the bottle, it's hard to put it in.

I don't think the country could be wrong.

I don't think the country wants a democratic version of Donald Trump.

Right?

Then I'm going to just rule and I'm gonna, you know, number one, I said this the other day in the paper, and I he's not interested in governing.

He's interested in ruling.

It's a very different zeitgeisty spirit.

We're not here to restore the bureaucracy of past.

I think we have to be honest where we failed.

And when I say we mean those of us who believed in the role of government as a equalizer society, a force for good, we got more interested in, the rules than we did in the results.

So if there's going to be an initiative to get kind of checks and balances in the system and institutional care, kind of, guardrails, speed counts, the American people are know that we're at a critical moment.

They know it in their bones.

You may not be able to articulate some big theory, and we can't let the bureaucracy suffocate stuff.

And what I mean by that, by example, we're in an energy crisis, electricity crisis in this country.

You know that it takes that, a proposal of build new power, whether it's solar, wind or whatever, and get it into the grid seven years now.

I'm sorry.

That's just unacceptable.

And the system needs to be pushed and needs to be accountable for results.

So there's a piece of that.

Second is, we have a lot of challenges, and I'll give you one experience.

You know, when I was ambassador to Japan, I learned a lot about Japan.

I learned a lot about the Far East.

I learned a lot about China.

I learned a lot about America being away from it and seeing it from a distance on the outside, rather than on the inside.

Nothing China does today scares me.

It's what America is not doing.

And the president has decided Were going to pit parts of Chicago against the rest of America.

We're going to pit, you know, we're going to redistrict in Texas or California, desert like America needs less politics, not more.

And he has pitted us against each other at the very time we need to be brought together to face one of the most unprecedented challenges of our time, both science, technology and the threat of China.

And I think it's a very danger.

And I think the American people know this is not healthy.

Hi.

And I'll close on this one anecdote.

So, you know, when I was done being mayor, the next day, I got on a bike with a buddy and we biked around Lake Michigan 13 days, 1000 miles.

And I joked that the worst the cell phone service, the nicer people were.

Well, you had to talk to each other.

You knew each other in the community.

You couldn't really be a jerk.

And I think we got to work at reestablishing not just our civility, our ability.

You know, listening is, you know, is an active.

It's not a passive.

We got to work on that.

Thank you.

Mike run, president.

Here's my thing.

I'm going to make a mental, emotional decision at the end of the year.

I'm not going to do anything about it, but I'll make a mental decision.

And if I think like on education, like on civil discussion, I can do something that others can.

And I have an ability that I think meets the moment for America, where it needs to go.

And I think I can do some bring something to this that is not there.

I will if I don't, I won't.

But it's going to be about what I think is needed to be done.

Now, one example, you don't know this from my other life, but you see, kind of like my job with the house was to win the majority, flip the house from the R to D. some of my best friendships are on the other side.

When I was chief of staff, president, for President Obama and I, we weren't in we hadn't been sworn in yet or he hadn't been sworn in yet.

President Bush and I worked out a lot of things to save the auto industry.

There's a level of trust.

I think I think in this moment in time, that is an important quality.

Not everything.

But the most important thing is having a vision of America, having a vision of the middle class and the American dream, and making sure that you have the policies to make it more accessible to people and change the direction of the last 30 years.

So, we have a governor that's also looking at the white House.

So if he runs, would you run?

If you run, I would work that out.

I don't well, first of all, there's you know, I don't think you have to.

For oh, just both of you run.

Well, they're all Florida one time Rubio and and Trump okay.

And Jeb Bush.

So yeah I don't think you have to worry about it though.

JB and I are friends and if we run I said, as I said to them when we were talking, if we both run, it will be awkward, but we're friends and that's it.

What do you think of Newsom?

Well, we were Texan the other night, so I think, you know, he's a very good governor of big state.

It's the fourth largest economy in the world, and he's gotten proven jobs being the governor of that state.

Kamala, I think she should run again.

That will be up to her.

I know I think the party is somewhere in a different place, but that's, you know, these are all in, in many ways are very professional, very cal cold, calculating political decisions.

They're also very personal decisions.

And you got to know.

They're big decisions.

They're big personal decisions.

I mean, come on, your life changes.

Your family changes.

Your friends change.

Everything.

Everything changes.

The one thing I know, and the better you do, the better you're expected to do.

That's not like anything else.

So everybody will make their own calculation.

What does it take to sit Trump down, move away from authoritative king like government to democracy as we know it?

So one of the things is you focus on Trump.

I focus on the fact that the Republican congressional wing has totally abdicated their responsibility.

He can never be doing what he's doing.

If there was if there was not a Democratic opposition Or a republican voice, now I say this.

- How do you tear down the East Wing without.

Question?

How do you bomb ships?

How do you bomb ships?

I always saw something on the other day on TV where a Republican senator sitting on the Intelligence committee says, we're owed a briefing.

Well, you're you're a senator.

Get the briefing.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

They have totally, in a way, abdicated their responsibility both to the institution they work for and to the, interests.

There's, you know, we're all here temporarily.

We're not here permanently.

You're renting this, are you?

And, you know, and the measure in the public service here is the status of what I inherited when I walked off.

Here's where I ended your measure.

By the full breadth of what you do.

You were I mean, I know number these senators and members of Congress.

You got to be kidding me.

You're going to you are going to take this to your grave.

So part of this is challenge him to be once again reestablish their responsibility to the country and the institution they serve.

And to live up to.

It.

Yeah, and they have Donald Trump.

It's not about Democrats.

And this is where people get wrong.

Not everybody goes, oh, the Democrats know the Republicans.

He couldn't look, when Cruz spoke up, he had a back down on getting Jimmy Kimmel fired.

It wasn't that big a deal.

All he had to say was, it's wrong to have literally have somebody fired because of free speech.

You could see that across a series of policy, and it's just the presidency.

If the Republicans would just address it and they have become a rubber stamp.

And I think the American people know this is not healthy.

How do you think, the effects of Trump on media people?

There's a diffusion of media.

One of the things that is going to be is YouTube is going to challenge to me the what's called now mainstream.

They are not the only but they are not the only sandbox in this deal.

80% of Americans look at YouTube.

So when you say to me, how do we I think the internal competitiveness is going to change the landscape.

I think there's a couple things you have to do.

Well.

One, I think we got to get the algorithms of social media to work the other way, which is if you're aggregating all your information on this side of the spectrum, you 10% of the information coming to you will be from the other side.

Just exposure is.

So make the algorithm work for the society, not against it.

Number two return to the Fairness Doctrine.

They got eliminated and it's been a major detriment.

And third, hold the media, social media accountable for what's out there in a way that, the 320, principle.

I think that's the right clause.

And I'm calling back in the FCC and all three of those together because social media platforms are different than the big.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how did you did you see anything in Japan's educational system that we might borrow for the United States?

What you see.

Family.

Family?

Yeah.

It's just pure mom, dad.

Right.

You've heard me up.

If you've heard me a hundred times, you've heard me a thousand times.

There are three doors in a child's life that will determine their future.

The front door of the home, the front door of the school and the front door.

The place of worship.

And if one of those doors is shut, it will affect the moral and educational development of a child.

And I was and is.

And so that's to me that's really important.

I think I as a father, not as a mayor, I think I've lived by that.

But yes, I firmly and as you know this, but prior to everything else, I was going to be an early childhood educator.

My dad was a pediatrician.

I then wanted to do early childhood psychology.

To me, every child is homeschooled.

Some are better homeschooled than others, but that home and that child can only do as well in school as that home supports and doesn't teach, but teaches the priority of education.

So that would be one thing that came from Japan.

Yes.

Number number two.

And this I used to joke I was going to get arrested.

Four year olds and five year olds walk to school by themselves in Japan.

I used to say to every business group, I said, do you think Mount Fuji is beautiful?

I'm going to tell you, as a person who was a mayor that built safe passage routes for kids to go to school in Chicago, the idea that a child is this big, their backpack is this big.

They'd come up to a major street, they put their hand up.

So it was above the grid of the car.

The grille of the car and cars came to a stop and they walked across the street.

All by themselves.

No parent, no eight blocks by themselves.

There is a sense of a community and a sense of a protective envelope.

We live in a city that has stolen childhood from our kids in Japan.

They have an innocence and a sense of trust and love from a community, not just their parents.

So yes, family.

And yes, the larger family known as the community is what I have.

I don't want my phone with me.

I have a picture.

I used to joke that I was going to get arrested because there I'm sitting there and I said, stop the car, and I take a picture of these little kids.

They have these backpacks that last their entire lives and they have their hats on.

But boys with baseball hats, young women with yellow hats blocking the sun, and they would walk to school.

And when they're.

No, I'm let me get I'm getting started.

And when they would leave school, they'd walk out the front gate and they just walk back home and they know exactly where they're going.

It's one of the most incredibly sublime, beautiful things I've ever seen.

What about social media do they have?

Do they have Facebook?

Do they have TikTok?

They have all the social media stuff, etc.. They use it like our like our kids use it, yes.

But they don't.

It's not allowed in the schools.

Okay.

That's what I. You know what Australia is doing something I'm fascinated with.

So I was a big I'm a big proponent.

No telephones in classrooms, no telephones.

Australia is taking it a step further.

No social media apps until the age of 18.

Ban banned on the phone.

That'll work.

I wouldn't do 18.

That's kind of.

Most you could say that, but I'm really intrigued by that.

Well, we'll start reading again.

Yeah, well we'll start at no.

Yeah.

We'll start talking to each other again.

We'll we'll get back to where we're supposed to be.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

And, we'll see what happens in 2028.

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