(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Forum 360" for a Zoom edition of our "Global Outlook with a Local View".

I'm Leslie Ungar, your host today.

I believe there are a million bad things that COVID is responsible for, but there are also a few good things.

Due to COVID, "Forum 360" now has the ability to do Zoom and our guest today is a guest that we would never be able to have if it wasn't for the ability to Zoom.

Mark Halperin is a national figure, former ABC News, Bloomberg, Showtime, a bestselling author, contributor and writer of a newsletter seven days a week.

Anyone that has ever written a newsletter knows that seven days a week is quite an accomplishment.

It is my pleasure to introduce our guest visiting "Forum 360" today, a weekly guest on Sirius Radio, but our guest today.

Welcome Mark.

- Leslie, thank you.

I'm pretty sure if you'd asked me to drive to Ohio pre-COVID, I would have, so I'm challenging your initial premise, but very nice of you to invite me and very glad I could join you.

- I confess that I'm a political junkie and I have come to the conclusion that embalming fluid may be the only cure, but I've also come to realize over the years that not everyone is interested in politics.

Perhaps the last four years have changed that a little bit, we'll find out today.

Well, I have as my guest today is an expert, whatever that means, in today's national politics.

My goal today is for all of us to learn some lessons from politics and from everyday life that we can apply to our professional life.

So welcome viewers.

My guest and I have never met before.

I once emailed him last fall to ask if he wanted my unsolicited advice about something which he said he did and that's the only contact we had.

Until a few weeks ago, I assumed my place on the couch at about 8:04 p.m. and I emailed Mark and asked him to be a guest on "Forum 360.

At 8:12, he answered me, "Yes."

Now I want to start out with this question, Mark, because as an executive coach, I counsel clients to be responsive to emails.

It's a way to protect your value.

But you have to get emails from all over the country, if not the world.

First of all, I have to ask you, how do you answer everyone's email?

- It takes a lot of time but I think it's important to do.

One great thing about doing a newsletter with readers mostly in the United States, but some all over the world, is I get to hear from lots of people.

And particularly during COVID when the basics of being a reporter, at least as far as I've been a reporter, which is traveling around and talking to people, it's just not been possible very much, the chance to hear from people, you know, you can learn a lot from questions.

Sometimes people will email me with advice or information.

A lot of my readers are people who are sources of mine who who send me information, but just getting questions from readers is a great gift as far as I'm concerned professionally and during the pandemic, it allows me to stay in touch with real people, which is nice.

And so I've always believed that if you let your inbox grow too big, you'll never get it back down.

I had a little crisis late last year where mine grew to a very large number and I spent six months getting it down.

It's now almost manageable.

So I try to answer very quickly and I'm a pretty fast Googler.

So I got your request and I Googled about the program and about you and it seemed like a good opportunity to get a chance to talk to you and to others so I'm happy to do it and happy to, as I always am, to engage with people who are interested in the world.

- So that was my next question was why?

Because I'm thinking if you said yes to me, that means that you're pretty open.

So what lesson is there, I guess out there for people to say yes to opportunities that, you know may be unexpected and you can't really know for sure?

- Yeah, well I mean I wouldn't recommend people say yes to everything.

I have a general rule about radio and television, which is I never go on a program I haven't seen or listened to.

So I did a little quick viewing to see.

But if time allows and someone is, the way you asked was very gracious and you explained the program, you explained why you were asking.

And so I think that time management in the digital age is extremely challenging, no matter who you are.

I wonder how super important, super busy people manage their inboxes 'cause it's a challenge.

Somebody like Ron Klain, the White House Chief of Staff, or Jared Kushner, who worked for his father-in-law in the White House, they must get lots and lots of texts and emails.

And it's a big challenge to manage.

But I think it's important to be responsive to people and I think it's important to look for opportunities to do interesting things.

And I consider this, being on here with you, Leslie, to be an interesting thing.

- Well thank you.

2020 taught us that in our professional lives that we had to learn to be nimble.

My words for 2020 were to rebrand, to reenergize, to be resilient.

In your career, you've been a producer, an author, a journalist, on Showtime, a contributor, a host.

What is some advice that you have about recreating your professional self?

- Well I think, I'm just coming back from the first sort of extensive reporting trip I've done in a year to CPAC in Florida and I was reminded of something I call the producer gene.

Television producers are, who are good television producers, have the ability to get things done and the mentality that they're gonna get something done.

So you walk into a hotel and you need 10 rooms 'cause you've got a big family trip and they say, "Oh, we lost a reservation, there are no rooms", and everybody's tired and wants to go to sleep.

Someone with the producer gene has everybody in bed within 20 minutes, they just do.

And so whether I've been a host or an anchor or a reporter or writer or a producer, once I developed that producer gene pretty early in my career, I go into any situation confident that I can get us those 10 rooms.

And I think that applies to almost any career because I have friends who do lots of different things, whether it be you're a lawyer, an accountant, a bus driver, a farmer, having that producer gene, which is again just a mentality that says, I will get this done, and I will do it nicely, I'm not gonna steamroll people or yell at people or trick people, I will be nice, I will be firm, I will be creative and I will get things done.

And so throughout my career whenever I've done something new, I've employed that producer gene.

- Now in one of your newsletters, you talked about something that I had not heard talked about in probably decades.

Way before cell phones, when I was first starting out, I was in sales, I was taught if you wanted to get ahold of the owner of the company, either call early in the day or call late in the day.

And you were talking about how you had spoke to someone very new in the position in the Biden administration and you would simply call early.

So sometimes there's advice that stays consistent, but do you remember that story and what someone could glean from that?

- I do, although I have to say it was not a true story in that case.

It's something I've done throughout my career, but in that case it was a little joke.

You know, there's nothing wrong with calling the president's national security advisor at six in the morning knowing that if he's there, he's probably gonna pick up his own phone.

If he doesn't wanna pick up the phone, he doesn't have to.

If he picks up and he doesn't wanna talk, he can excuse himself, but in general, again, that's the producer gene, that's creative.

I want to talk to that person.

If I tried to call him at 10 o'clock, you know, one thing I'll say as a professional matter for reporters, professional matters for others, and as a personal matter, I'm a big fan of the voice as opposed to texting and email.

I do a lot of texting and email and communicating on social media, but I think one thing I tell young reporters is pick up the phone and call and when we're not in a pandemic, go see people face to face.

Young people, I find it's not their default.

Their default is digital, text communication or sending emojis or photos.

So I call people a lot and I find that to be more human and more helpful.

And again, I'll go back to it, the producer gene of just saying, you're gonna solve the problem.

You're not gonna admire the problem, bemoan the problem, describe it, examine it, tell other people about it, you're just gonna solve it.

- Now you, when I Googled you, your father was a foreign policy expert.

- Still is.

- Still is.

I live with a man who grew up in another country and that has affected how I look at both America and how the world looks at America.

And I'm wondering if there was something that you can point to that contributed to your view of either America or how the world looks at America?

- What country?

- Tunisia, France, Israel, America.

- That's a lot of countries.

You know, my father worked in the Johnson Pentagon, the Lyndon Johnson Pentagon and then in the Nixon White House and he traveled quite a bit for work and dealt with a lot of global issues and had a particular focus for a time on Japan.

And Japan has been been one of my great personal and professional interest as well.

I've been there a lot and I'm very interested in their culture and that prism, I can give you a lot of answers to the question, but this is what I'm giving you, that prism has been incredibly helpful to me because Japan during my lifetime, most of my lifetime in my adult life, has been one of the leading industrialized democracies in the world and a vibrant economy, vibrant democracy, a leader internationally in things the United States is no leader in, in culture, in technology, in architecture.

And yet it couldn't be more different than the United States in a lot of ways.

So when I studied Japan in college, their governmental system is very different than the United States, very different, they have a parliamentary system.

But what I quickly learned thanks to my one of my professors is their system politically is actually more like the other industrialized democracies than the US.

So Japan has been a great prism for me to see the way the United States is atypical in some ways, more typical in others.

And to have a country like Japan whose economy and cultural influence is so similar and yet is in so many ways different has been a real benefit to me to kind of keep my perspective about the US's place in the world.

- Now before we get to the current day, you went to Harvard.

What is something that would surprise us about going to Harvard?

- I don't know because people are pretty knowledgeable about everything these days.

So whenever I'm asked, what would surprise, I always hesitate.

I think it's the case, at least when I was there, that if you go there and you don't want to be a very academic person, you don't have to be a very academic person and you can still graduate.

I'm a very bad student.

I get sleepy when I read and I'm not very disciplined and I'm not great at taking tests.

But I think I could do better now.

I still graduated.

So my point is there's some places, some competitive schools where I think there's more pressure to be academically oriented once you get in.

There really isn't at Harvard.

Once you're in it's kind of like, I wouldn't say easy, but you can make it relatively easy academically.

And that's the way a lot of elite Japanese universities are.

It's hard to get into an elite Japanese university, but once you get in, my understanding is you don't have to work all that hard as compared to getting in and the process to get in.

And that's what Harvard can be like if that's what one chooses.

- Now that is a surprise.

- [Mark] Okay, there you go.

- Now recently, this show will air in a few weeks, but I'm asking this question because this past weekend may have repercussions for the next two or four years.

You were just at CPAC.

You have written about being at CPAC when Trump first spoke to CPAC and how you felt about seeing him first speak and the effect that he may have in the future.

So my first question is, did you hear anyone at CPAC that you felt is going to have a big effect in the next two to four years?

- Yeah, I mean I could name a lot of people because I listened to a lot of people and I talked to a lot of people there, but the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, and someone who I've talked to in the past, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

I think all three of them have the potential to be the Republican nominee in 2024 and to be big players at least within the conservative movement and the Republican party, if not more broadly.

But I'd say those three are three people I talk to who I would definitely keep keep your eye on.

- When I watch journalists now on TV, I think of, let's say Maggie Haberman, I wonder when you were a journalist, did you think you were going to be making a living or partly making a living on a visual medium like TV or did you see yourself just as a print journalist that would just be doing the writing but wouldn't be out front?

- Well, my first job was in television and most of my career I've been in television.

I was at Time Magazine for awhile but even when I was at Time, I did a lot of television.

I didn't start doing on-air work until a little bit when I was covering Bill Clinton in 1991.

And then let's see, by 2000, I was doing a lot of on-air work.

So 12 years into my career, I shifted to a role that was kind of 50/50 on-air and behind the scenes.

And then in around 2008, I shifted to primarily being, having a byline in Time Magazine and being in front of the camera.

So I've never given up though being a producer.

And I think one piece of advice- - [Leslie] That producer gene.

- Yeah the producer gene.

And one piece of advice I give people who work in anything that's collaborative, and most jobs are, most civic activities, volunteer work, is try to figure out how everyone else does their job.

What's hard about their job?

What's fun about their job?

How did they learn to do their job?

Because the more you understand what other people are doing the easier it is to appreciate their work and the easier it is to get the most out of the collaborative effort.

To put a taped piece of television on the air on a network is 150 people literally could touch that in one way or the other, from the graphics to the bookings to the editing to the shooting.

If you know a lot about how everybody works, you can get the most out of it.

You can minimize the dangers and the risks and you can maximize the creative opportunity.

So even as I've become, even as I became someone who was on camera hosting shows, I thought a lot about, oh, how'd they make that graphic?

How did they get that piece of video?

Who's booking the satellite time?

All of those things, I think if I've had one advantage or two advantages.

of the two advantages I think that have allowed me to have some success in my career, one of the two is I've always appreciated and learned about how other people do their jobs.

And like I said, I think that's applicable to almost any other profession.

- Yes, I think that it is.

Now before we turn to today's politics, I want to reintroduce our guest today, Mark Halperin.

He is currently author of "The Seven Day a Week Wide World of News" and contributed to other sources on today's politics.

So first let me ask you this.

I hear educated people say all the time, "I don't watch the news.

I don't watch any of the politics.

I don't turn on the TV.

I don't read anything."

Why should the quote average, if there is such a thing, average American care about the daily goings on in our Capitol?

- Well, you know, you've talked about politics now using that phrase a couple of times.

I think that for me, politics is not who's someone hiring as their campaign manager or when's this committee gonna pass this bill?

To me, politics is the aspirations of the country.

In the case of America, what are the aspirations of the American people?

And in both politics and government, if they're being done correctly and if they're being covered by journalists correctly, that's the prism through which to look at that.

So there are lots of people who care about who's Joe Biden's campaign manager gonna be or who's his secretary of defense gonna be?

I care about that stuff some, but not nearly as much as a lot of political reporters.

I care about what does the country want in a defense secretary?

what does the country want to spend on the Pentagon?

So I think, I don't blame people for not being interested in the nuts and bolts and kind of the soap opera aspects of it.

Some people are, some aren't.

But I think when everybody should be interested in is what does what the government doing, what is what political candidates are saying, how does that potentially affect the real lives of real people?

And if that's how you think of it, if that's how it's covered, then I think who wouldn't be interested in that?

Because the government's the biggest part of our economy.

It's the biggest expression of our national aspirations, our national hopes and fears, and tells can you send your kid to college?

Can you afford to buy a house?

Can you get a raise?

If you're making the minimum wage, can you be safe when you take a flight overseas?

All those things are, you know, those are important to everybody.

- One thing that has really come up the last week or so for me, and I'd like you to weigh in on this, today when people vote for a candidate, whether it's a mayor, a governor, a senator, a congressman, a president, and I know it's not fair, no generalization is true including this one, but do they vote more on issues, on pro-choice, on pro-life?

Where does character come in?

Do people vote for character and leadership anymore?

- I think they do.

I mean I think that character and leadership have become part of another word that I think is a broader word that people really care about which is authenticity.

So there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump twice, who at least the second time and in many cases, the first time, said, "I don't really care much for the guy's character", but they saw him as authentic and they saw him as an authentic expression of the way they wanted the president to be.

They didn't want an insider, they wanted an outsider.

They didn't want someone who would kind of pay attention to the norms of how people treat each other in government.

They wanted someone who'd be different.

So character is part of authenticity.

I think values is part of authenticity, but authenticity is kind of the expression of who someone is.

And I think people want authenticity to have a- - Now do you have a word for 2021?

I have an effort.

I gave it about an hour try and I got to tell you I gave up.

You have the word grace, your gang of grace.

I think it sounds great, but I don't know how to do it.

I don't know how when someone says the election was stolen, when a senator says it wasn't an armed insurrection, I didn't see arms, I don't know how to answer that with grace.

So would you talk about your idea and your initiative of a gang of grace?

- Yeah, a gang of grace and presumption of grace as opposed to a presumption of hate.

I felt this way since the '90s when I saw so much hatred in politics and in the country more broadly.

I think that it's easy to show grace towards someone you agree with.

It's hard to show someone you disagree with.

And the things you cited, claiming the election was stolen, nitpicking saying, well the Capitol might've been invaded, but people were looted in Minneapolis, but I will tell you that people who have different politics than you do have the same mirror image issues.

So I was watching some cable news today on my flight and they were talking about the new vaccine and they were covering the development of the new vaccine and the Biden administration's role in its distribution like it was a celebration.

They weren't saying, "Well, I wonder if this one works" or, "How much is Johnson and Johnson making off of this?"

or, "Did the Biden administration really play a big role here?"

Now you think back to last year, how has developments related to the vaccine covered by liberal cable channels?

Not like that, not like a celebration.

When President Trump said the vaccine could be available by the end of the year, the press didn't say, "Well, that would be great.

Let's write glowing pieces about the people in the Trump administration who developed that."

So can you show grace towards the reporters who covered the development of the vaccine last year differently than they're covering it this year?

If you're someone on the right, it's hard for them.

They look at that and they're furious to say how unfair.

So you have people that you have difficulty showing it to but I can tell you that people who say the Capitol, the examples you gave, that the election was stolen, they've got problems too with people.

So what I'm advocating through the presumption of grace not the presumption of hate is I give everybody one or two passes, and a lot of people will use their pass for Donald Trump, for people on the left, but I think with few exceptions, it's important to extend some of the presumption of grace.

Reason with them, talk to them about their ideas, try to convince them that they're wrong if you disagree with them, but just the basics of not hating them, not approaching them in a way where they're cartoon or a caricature, even if, I mean the things you just said, I won't say all 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump will agree, but let's say 30 million, I think I feel safe with that number being a floor.

You want to disagree with 30 million Americans and not afford them the presumption of grace?

I just think as a country we just can't afford that.

So I'm trying to get everybody to start in their political dialogue, in their discussions with friends and family, where some people have trouble extending the presumption of grace, let's start with a presumption of grace, let's start by treating people like human beings, let's start without anger, animus, criticism, and then let's do what we need to do to get the country headed in the right direction.

It doesn't cost a single tax dollar.

And as I've been able to do it more and more, I'm not perfect, but as I've been able to do it more and more, as I've been trying to practice what I'm preaching now, it feels great.

It's a huge relief to not be angry at people and to really just extend the presumption of grace, look at it from their point of view as best you can and try to engage in a dialogue that can maybe change hearts and minds and brains as opposed to just constantly clench fists at each other.

- I'm gonna ask you for kind of a yes or no answer to this question.

Frank Luntz in one of his polling said that over 50% think America's best days are behind us.

You've talked to the red lands and the blue lands.

Yes or no?

Would you say that that the red lands and the blue lands, do they say that our best days are behind us?

- Well increasing number of Americans have said that.

I mean another way to ask the question is do you think your children or grandchildren will have a better America or more economic opportunity, better country than you've had?

And an increasing number of Americans have said no.

I think that's one of the most corrosive and discouraging statistics and polling.

It's kind of a longer term version of, do you think the country's on the right track or the wrong track?

People have said wrong track in very high numbers for quite some time with few exceptions.

So I think it's important that this country which was founded on optimism, which throughout its history has had lots of optimistic people who have who have led the way to succeed not just economically, but culturally, in terms of society and religion and faith, I think it'd be great to get to a place where people could be more optimistic.

But I think to go back to the presumption of grace, I think part of why people are pessimistic is 'cause they feel so divided.

They feel like we're having the second civil war, not usually violent, but sometimes with violence, but just a day to day clash between the red lands and the blue lands, that I can see when people are pessimistic about that.

It makes me a little pessimistic.

But I'm hoping we can rise above it.

- I want to end on something optimistic.

Where is the first place you want to get on a plane and go post-COVID, one place?

- Back to Tokyo with my family.

But that's almost always my answer because I love it there.

- Thank you to Mark Halperin and our audience for joining us today.

If you remember one thing from our discussion, perhaps you will remember to answer your emails, to answer quickly and to show grace.

I'm Leslie Ungar, your host on "Forum 360".

Thank you to Mark Halperin and our audience for joining us today.

- [Female] "Forum 360" is brought to you by John S. and James L. Knight foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications and Forum 360 Supporters.