Rahm on China: Colorful Diplomacy, Alliances, and the Military-Industrial Complex
PLUS: the exclusive bank of all Rahm’s China tweets
Straight from Tokyo, Japan: an exclusive interview with Amb. Rahm Emanuel.
Before his current posting as US ambassador to Japan, Rahm served as a senior advisor to Bill Clinton, multiple terms in the US House of Representatives, Obama’s first chief of staff, and the mayor of Chicago.
If nothing else, you can count on his gloves-off, no-holds-barred approach to politics — and he’s been no different when it comes to China. Notwithstanding reports that even officials in Biden’s NSC have told him to stop “taunting” China, Rahm has been consistently, uniquely willing to say out loud what virtually every other high-ranking US official doesn’t.
Of course, the ambassador — or, as his desk placard during his chief-of-staff days read, “Undersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself” — may take issue with that framing. His comments aren’t “critical,” Rahm says, but “truthful.”
This interview covers a ton of ground. On China:
How the Biden administration is closing the chapter on “hub and spokes,” what tomorrow’s “latticework” architecture will look like, and what Asia-Pacific alliances might look like under a second Trump administration;
The future of Japan-Korea, and a peek behind the curtain on how the historic Camp David summit materialized;
Rahm’s “3 Cs” for China — calm, conflict, charm — and how US foreign-policy leaders should reckon the mutual inconsistencies among those three;
And roads not taken by Xi: why Rahm thinks China’s entrepreneurial culture has taken a nosedive, and what China’s government today is most scared of.
And on politics and life:
Why “diplomacy” and “politics” are the same thing — and why that’s a good thing;
Whether the State Department suffers from a personality deficit, and what makes for a good ambassador;
How to heal America’s body politic — post-Trump, post-Recession, post-GWOT;
Why Rahm thinks “quality time” with kids is “BS,” and thoughts on raising kids as a time-crunched politician;
And what Rahm thinks the biggest emerging threat to the world is.
I really enjoyed my trip to Japan and am looking for a sponsor to continue recording shows on the country. If you work at JETRO, METI, The Japan Foundation, Mitsubishi, Rakuten, etc. and are interested in seeing more deep coverage of Japan and US-China-Japan relations on this podcast, do reach out!
Jordan Schneider: So you’ve meant a lot to me, personally…
Rahm Emanuel: My kids don’t say that!
Jordan Schneider: Well, of course your kids aren’t going to say that to you! But look — I grew up in New York City as a Jew who couldn’t sit still and cared about politics. I looked up to Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner and their chutzpah-filled energy (not the greatest idols to have at 15). And all of a sudden, you’re here, you’re still doing it, and you’re still being yourself — so thank you for existing in this space.
So, you and Xi share something in common: you’re both Faust fans. There are puff pieces written about Xi that say that, during the Cultural Revolution, he walked thirty miles to get the book out of the library. He was reading it with a kerosene lamp…
Rahm Emanuel: So who’s Mephisto?
Jordan Schneider: In 2014, Xi said that America thinks China is Mephisto! He was in Germany — this was one of his lines.
Rahm Emanuel: Well, he surely has taken that to heart.
Jordan Schneider: Yeah, apparently when he does things like this, he’s got books behind him every year — and every year, Goethe makes it behind him for his annual address.
Rahm Emanuel: Is that the only Western one that does?
Jordan Schneider: No! For the American ones, we’ve got Leaves of Grass, Huckleberry Finn, Jack London, Old Man in the Sea. He said every time he goes to Cuba, he orders a mojito in honor of Hemingway.
Ruthless Enough on China?
Jordan Schneider: “You have to be idealistic enough to know what you’re doing and ruthless enough to get it done.”
Rahm Emanuel: Correct. That’s what leadership is.
Jordan Schneider: Has the US been ruthless enough with respect to China?
Rahm Emanuel: So let me back up, having authored that quote — it was in response to, “How do you define leadership?” And I think if you look at great leaders, they’re idealistic enough to know why they’re doing what they’re doing, and ruthless or tough enough then to get it done.
A lot of times, journalists, commentators, historians talk about one side as if that’s the defining characteristic. But you can have all the ideas you want, but if you don’t have the capability to see one through — or if all you do is see one through, but you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing or where it’s leading to … so there’s a compass to this, as well as a perseverance to this.
I think the United States — and President Biden, particularly given I’m serving now — has a real vision. You and I are doing this meeting two weeks out from the State Visit, where I think we’re transforming our relationship in the region from a “hub and spokes” to this “latticework” system.
If you look at the last two years — whether it’s encouraging Japan to step up on the security front, encouraging the trilateral relationship, a re-energized Quad, at the backend of our State Visit by Japan we’ll have a first-ever trilateral with the Philippines, AUKUS, you look at Vietnam — this latticework architecture: it’s a vision, it’s a set of ideas, and it’s been with a perseverance and determination led by the president in direct response to China’s mistakes and in their own neighborhood, in their own backyard. Which is actually a fundamental principle of theirs, which is that China, Russia, United States, as superpowers, should have their own spheres of influence.
What I think gets at China is that, in their own backyard, their sphere of influence is limited by their mistakes, and we’re taking advantage of it.
So is it ruthless enough? I don’t know if I would use “ruthless” (as the author of that word), but the president has been persistent in pursuing a singular goal with a single-mindedness. And if you look at where we were five years ago — and how people like you were talking about the United States — and you look at us today, I’d rather have our hand the way we’re playing it than China’s hand the way they’re playing it.
Jordan Schneider: We’ll come back to the alliance network in a second, but I think the more direct coercive actions on China — when it comes to limiting investment or October 7, pursuing decoupling (not from the promote side, but from the protect side) — I think there are folks out there, perhaps myself included, who see roads not taken when it comes to being more aggressive and disentangling the US and China.
Rahm Emanuel: So let me step back — I can’t believe I’m taking this approach, but for the rare moment, to be the more thoughtful here: one is not to be so aggressive that all you have is aggression. I think the United States, I wouldn’t say has the luxury, but should be strategic enough to decide (since we’re in baseball season) which pitches to swing at and which ones you don’t swing at.
And just to say “roads not taken” — well, you don’t have to take every road. If you took every road, you wouldn’t go anywhere fast. So I think it’s taking the right roads or swinging at the right pitches, the ones that count, the ones that have strategic value.
China has a basic premise that they are the rising power, we’re a declining power, and either you get in line or you’re going to get the Philippines treatment.
Our message is that we are a permanent Pacific power and presence, and you can bet long on us.
And I think when you look back at the two of those: we have made more of a down payment and are in a stronger position on our basic premise than they are.
And the other piece of this, on the flipside: we stayed too long with the idea that China was a strategic competitor, when they had changed by 2013 — where they approached the United States as a strategic adversary. And it wasn’t really, maybe you can say Trump, but it wasn’t until President Biden put in place the things that he has done — on the diplomatic side, the defense side, the deterrence side, the political side — that we had an effective strategy to deal with China’s decision to approach the United States as an adversary rather than a competitor.
The Art of Diplomacy
Jordan Schneider: So Japan-Korea, I think, is the most impressive accomplishment in American diplomacy over this administration. How did it happen? What lessons should future leaders learn from this? And maybe compare it to Clinton’s diplomacy and getting other people who really hate each other to get along?
Rahm Emanuel: Some people think diplomacy is right over here — gray flannel suit, pipes, big thoughts — and some people think there’s this dirty thing called politics over here. The fact is, diplomacy is politics by just another name.
And one of the lessons to take away from this: President Biden showed great appreciation in building personal relationships with both President Yoon and Prime Minister Kishida, and then gave them the confidence to go past doing the bare minimum. And that’s an outgrowth of that.
Second, if you look at past efforts of every other president who’s tried this in administration: we put ourselves so far in the middle that Japan and Korea didn’t talk to each other. And to the credit of the State Department, the president, the National Security Office, the ambassadors, [US ambassador to Korea] Phil Goldberg, myself — going into Camp David a year out, we held almost fifty different trilateral gatherings at multiple different levels. And at those trilateral gatherings, you have a lot of bilaterals between Japan, Korea, deputy foreign ministers, national security advisors, defense secretaries. And the constant contact created familiarity. Camp David was a culmination of a year’s worth of trilateral meetings at multiple levels, where you’re then having breakfast or lunch or coffee with your counterpart.
And we didn’t have to be in everything. Our role was more, at one level, to facilitate — but not let the two parties talk to each other through us. And that showed, I think, maturity in how we approached our role, rather than kind of jumping into the deep end all the time. Sometimes we did, but a lot of times we didn’t.
The other piece of it — this is somewhat separate but relevant — is that Prime Minister Kishida had a background with the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement with Korea: President Yoon’s father came to Japan in the 1960s to study. Well, if you’re here from Korea in the 1960s, you’re a pioneer. So both of them had a personal relationship beyond just the professional — and they both realized, given what was going on with both China and North Korea, that they had to do more than what the two countries were doing. So when you put all those different threads together, you got something going.
Jordan Schneider: Is there a downside of over-indexing on leader-to-leader contact and personal relationships?
Rahm Emanuel: I’m a big believer in it, and I’ll give you one anecdote.
When President Clinton was early in his tenure of his first term, Richard Nixon made his first trip back to the White House, ever. Clinton meets with him, and one of the pieces of advice that Nixon gives Clinton:
Don’t ever underestimate the power of the personal relationship. The State Department can’t pick up the phone, but you can get Hosni Mubarak on the phone and say, “I need this, and this is the President of the United States” — and if you have that relationship, he’s going to owe you one because you’ve done X, Y, and Z for him.
Can it do everything? Can it smooth over everything? No. Is it, at crucial moments, valuable to have that personal relationship and that personal experience and that trust? Without a doubt, 100%. And I’ve seen it many, many times: whether it was on President Clinton’s side in many crucial moments, whether it’s the Middle East when we navigated India and Pakistan; I’ve seen it with President Obama during different pieces of his tenure. So it’s not everything, but as my grandfather would say, it’s not bupkis either.
Jordan Schneider: I guess I’m thinking about Stalin convincing himself that, because he knew Hitler, he wasn’t going to invade. I think leaders can convince themselves they understand because they have relationships with other people — and they blind themselves to other inputs because they think they have a relationship.
Rahm Emanuel: Sure, everybody does. That’s human.
But I do think in foreign policy — and not just foreign policy — politics is a people’s business. And I don’t mean to use business, but it’s a people relationship. And if you build up levels of trust, it can be a tremendous asset.
Can you be blinded and disappointed? Well, it’s human relationships. Anybody can be disappointed. That’s not breaking news, and you’re not going to get a live feed at 10 o’clock — diplomats and political leaders misread each other all the time.
I do think successful foreign-leader engagement is to understand what the other person’s politics is. Even if you’re an authoritarian government: they have politics, they have domestic interests, they have different pressure points. And if you can appreciate theirs — and obviously having a full appreciation of your own — a successful leader will understand that and see if they can find where (a) either there’s a win, or (b) it’s not so costly a stretch.
China’s Road Not Taken: Deng Xiaoping
Jordan Schneider: So let’s take that and come back to China. I was reading some China books coming over here — and I was thinking: what America would really love to happen is an “embracing defeat” moment for China. They don’t have to “lose” — hopefully they don’t have to lose a World War III to get there — but that mindset between what China's goals are in the world has a pretty fundamental shift, and one that is much more amenable with where the rest of the world wants to take it.
How do we get there, Rahm?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, now that I know President Xi likes American literature, I may have some books for him to read — and maybe that will save that for my Hanukkah gift.
Jordan Schneider: No, please — what are you going to assign him?
Rahm Emanuel: Now I’m going to think about really good books for him in American literature — what’s his birthday? Let’s find out his birthday. We’ll send him some books over to the embassy. [Ed. Nicholas and Xi Jinping share the same birthday: June 15!]
So President Xi comes in 2012, 2013, and he has a choice: to quote Yogi Berra, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.” There’s the “Mao Zedong” road and the “Deng Xiaoping” road — and he rejects Deng Xiaoping.
And the biggest thing that he does isn’t crushing the private sector or favoring the state control, etc. China has quite an entrepreneurial culture, and he crushed their entrepreneurship — and in crushing their entrepreneurship and the tactics he adopted, he crushed the confidence of the world in China.
As you and I are sitting here talking, he’s holding a conference with business leaders — mainly US, but others from around the world — hoping to encourage them to come back. It’s very hard to have people come back and invest when you’re arresting them. In 2010, years ago, you used to get people in companies to raise their hand and say, “Okay, I want to move to Beijing or Shanghai or wherever, and move with their offices.” But now, you can’t get anybody in Japan, Europe, or the United States to raise their hand and say, “I’d like to move my family to a city where I could get arrested any given day and be in lockdown.” So they have now lost the confidence of the world.
And there’s also rising youth unemployment, massively declining foreign investment. And China did not lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The international system that China was a part of enabled China to do that. They followed smart policies at home, but the international system — of which they were probably the single greatest beneficiary — they turned their back on. And when they turned their back on it, guess what? The rest of the world — or at least the developed world that they cared — about started turning their back.
How many times are you going to have somebody just turn their back on you? How many times are you going to have somebody steal your intellectual property or conduct economic espionage or arrest your citizens cavalierly?
So I think our desire would be: if you want to come back into the system, be part of a responsible stakeholder, have your voice heard, and contribute, great! If you want to turn your back on it and be self-sufficient to the point that the rest of the world is literally pushed away, then you’ll have their own domestic consequences in China. And that’s the part of China that they’re most scared about. Yes, they’re scared of the United States; they’re scared of a collective, unified neighborhood. But they’re very scared of the Chinese people.
And they have a reason to be scared of the Chinese people, because they have failed to deliver the very fundamental premise: “you give us security and power, we’ll give you access to the Chinese dream” — and they have crushed it.
Jordan Schneider: That line is a lever that a lot of American politicians are less comfortable pushing on — being explicit about domestic unrest being something that’s in America’s interest.
Rahm Emanuel: It’s not in our interest. I didn’t say it was. They made a choice, and it has consequences. In China, they’re arresting their entrepreneurs; they’re pushing them out of the country. Facts. The number-four ethnic group that is coming over the southwest border of the United States is Chinese. That’s a $30,000 trip. That is not the rural poor of China.
Somebody told me — I don’t know if it’s true or not true — that here in Tokyo, any apartment or condo above $2 million has a Chinese bidder on it. They’re the major real estate buyer in Hokkaido. People are getting their money out. They’re leaving. Entrepreneurs are not starting businesses. Youth unemployment — whether they want to report accurate data or not, it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a high propensity of unemployed youth in China. Capital is fleeing.
Ten years ago, there was a different economic structure in China. It wasn’t just built on debt. It was built on entrepreneurship. It was built on the world having confidence in China’s future and being willing to invest in it. China decided not to have that. I can’t stop you from hurting yourself. I tried, but you won’t listen.
Jordan Schneider: So I guess one more time: we’ll say Xi is a lost cause — what else can America and its allies be doing to make sure that the next person, when they see that fork in the road, chooses a different direction?
Rahm Emanuel: Well first of all, part of leadership is knowing what you can do and what you can’t do. The price in China right now is cognizant of the Chinese. They know the economy’s not doing well. They know their youth are unemployed. They know that people aren’t getting homes. They know the fact is that the future generation has very little confidence in the Chinese dream or the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to deliver it. That’s going to be one of the biggest holds on China.
I’ve always said there are three Chinas — it’s called the three Cs:
The core is calm. The relationship between the PRC and the people of China — they want calm, and they’re very nervous about it.
The second ring is the conflict ring, which is China in the neighborhood: India, Philippines, Japan — they’re in constant conflict.
And then there’s the outer ring, which is the charm China. “It’s a win-win,” “we just want people to get along,” etc.
And all those are in conflict with each other. By way of example: China is trying to convince our Western business leaders to invest in China so they can have the calm China. Yet, we just discovered — along with the UK — incredible cyberattacks generated by the Chinese government in our two respective countries. That’s the conflict China. The conflict China and charm China are not the same — or as I said yesterday, they’re “not often charming, but frequently offensive.”
State Department Antics
Jordan Schneider: Let’s talk about the State Department for a second.
Rahm Emanuel: This is going to be the shortest tenure for a diplomat.
Jordan Schneider: You’ve made it a while now!
You once said that the Chicago mayor job was better than all and others put together. How does being ambassador compare to your past roles?
Rahm Emanuel: On that quote: David Axelrod and I frequently say that there are five great jobs in public life in America: president, governors of either New York or California, and mayors of either New York or Chicago. And I jokingly said, “I have had one and a half of those jobs, and I’m okay.”
The way I test a job: are you learning, and are you contributing? And this is a great job because I feel like I’m contributing in many ways to the US-Japan relationship and to the US-Japan posture in the region. And I’m constantly, every day, learning something new. So I find it very intellectually and emotionally and psychologically stimulating and enriching.
It’s not like my Wikipedia page is empty here. It’s a great job, and it’s a great job at this point in my career.
Jordan Schneider: So let’s talk about contributing. I think you bring a very different energy to what a lot of the State Department seems to hire and optimize and choose for.
Does US diplomacy suffer from a deficit in personality?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, you can’t have 250,000 people with personality. For a color to stand out, you need a little gray somewhere.
My big thing is, you all who cover it think diplomats are in one place and political people are in another. And I would say to you: if you go back and look at history or look at people who were very successful on the international arena, they have a pretty apt appreciation of politics. Jim Baker comes to mind, but you could also go back to John Burns (under both Roosevelt and Truman), who is a pretty shrewd political player — under-written about, but underappreciated how influential he was with those two presidents.
So not everybody can be colorful. Nor do you want everybody colorful.
On the other hand, what you don’t want to create is a permissive environment where it’s so risk-free and all you’re doing is writing memos. You don’t want a hundred people trying to go create things. On the other hand, you don’t want to distill it down to the basis where you totally penalize anybody to either take a risk or try to make something. The goal here is not to get another meeting, to write another memo, to get another meeting, to write another memo.
Like in other jobs I’ve had, like I said here when I first got here: we’re going to get on a plane, and at some point, you’re going to turn around — and you want to make sure that when you were here, you put your thumb on the scales and you tipped it. It’s not just to write a memo about a meeting.
Jordan Schneider: Has your view on donors getting ambassadors changed after having done the job?
Rahm Emanuel: I mean, I think it takes all types.
The political ambassadors come in two stripes: (1) the one you just mentioned, financial supporters in the campaign; and then (2) people like myself who ran for office, held office, like Senator Tom Udall in New Zealand, or former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in India.
And you have people that work their way up and then people who work their way up in a region and have regional expertise. I was just actually bizarrely talking to my DCM [Deputy Chief of Mission] about this — who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, and whether you think I’m a good ambassador or not, whatever effectiveness I get because I have a great team and a great DCM.
Two people I’ve gotten to know that I really enjoy not only spending time with, but have learned from are Ambassador Phil Goldberg in Korea, and MaryKay Carlson in the Philippines. Both are career.
But there are donors also. And some of them I know well and are contributing in their role. So it depends. It’s really not about your background. It’s also as much about what you do with the job and what your purpose is with the job.
Assembling the Latticework
Jordan Schneider: What do you think the national-security state does well and does poorly?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, that’s a whole separate podcast.
Jordan Schneider: We got time!
Rahm Emanuel: You do. I don’t. I got a day job!
Look, let me just take this region in this moment. I think the administration — particularly on the national-security apparatus — has a vision of flipping our role in the Indo-Pacific from a hub-and-spokes system to a latticework. And when you assemble:
giving Japan the confidence to up their defense budget, counter strike, rewrite their export laws, their national security;
you look at the trilateral with the US, Japan, and Korea, and the US, Japan, and the Philippines;
you look at what we’ve done with engaging India in the region;
you look at how we’ve engaged the Philippines and our access;
you look at Vietnam;
you look at AUKUS…
That is a lot of furniture in two years, an unbelievable amount of execution, assiduously and persistently pursuing a singular goal of changing the American posture in the region to be a better deterrent. So that would be good. And not just good — really good. And it’s brought a lot of coordination between the Defense Department, State Department, Commerce Department, etc.
I do think — and this is going to get me in trouble — that our military and industrial enterprises do not realize how much their weaknesses impact our political and diplomatic and strategic endeavors. And we have to fix an entity that can’t meet a timeline or a budget. And it has real implications — not just on the deterrent side, but also on the political diplomatic side, because it’s about trust. So that would be a place that really needs to pick up their game.
Jordan Schneider: I had it here as a pitch for you as your next thing: to take on defense acquisitions.
Rahm Emanuel: You got a bat? Because that’s what it needs.
Look, I know this from enough being a chief of staff and the mayor and DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] chair: you got to have good people. You got to have good people in the right place with a certain sense of mission — not just here to get a job done and go home at 5. You got to have a mission and a purpose and understand the value in the larger scheme of things.
The other thing: I’m a 100% believer in the president’s view that allies are an asset and a tremendous advantage America has. But you can’t have alliances without allies, and you got to treat them as allies, friends, and partners. And sometimes we have good days at that, and sometimes we have bad days at that.
Jordan Schneider: Talking about good people: Mike Gallagher is calling it quits.
Rahm Emanuel: It’s a loss for America.
Jordan Schneider: Is there anything that can be done to make Congress a place for people like him to want to stay?
Rahm Emanuel: First of all, Mike’s a friend. We text as regularly as three times a day. My prediction is Mike Gallagher is going to be back on the field, contributing to the better.
Now, we don’t agree on everything, but on the overall premise that public service is honorable, we 100% agree, and I think he is a real asset to the United States. And this is not the last we’ve heard of him. That’s my prediction. And I hope he comes back to public life.
The broader question is: Congress has a level of dysfunction, and it’s not on every party. I hate all the journalists that go, “Oh, a pox o’ both your houses” [Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1]. That’s just not true. At one level, if you’re running for Congress and you’re serving in Congress, you have to believe in the function of government. And you have people in government and general positions that don’t believe in the function of government. That’s a breakdown, and that’s not equally shared in both parties.
Jordan Schneider: Are you worried how…
Rahm Emanuel: Yes. Okay, I’m Jewish. I’m worried. I don’t even care. Name the subject, I’m worried. What’s the subject?
Jordan Schneider: I’m was going to go latticework and Trump in Asia — the future of American alliance networks in Asia.
Rahm Emanuel: It is hard to move a rock uphill. That rock comes down very fast.
The president really believes and has worked hard — and I’ve seen it firsthand — at building alliances and building up allies. And if you’re not doing that … nothing stays stagnant in life, in politics. It comes down. It’s either going up or it’s going down. But there’s always velocity.
Jordan Schneider: So a number of big accomplishments you’ve had in Chicago and here as well have required bringing in corporate or philanthropic support. What advice do you have for other leaders thinking about cobbling those things together? What’s your secret for getting tens of millions of dollars out of people?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, if I told you that, you got to read the next book — no, you got to buy it.
There are secrets in the sense of knowing what’s in somebody’s self-interest, etc. But that said, I also have a Rolodex that I’ve built up over thirty years of public service. And I’ve put it to use.
But nobody’s going to give just because I supported AI research or quantum computing or anything else — unless they have a confidence and a trust. You have to have that.
And so when you call a CEO and you say, “Look, I want to talk to you about something”: first, they got to have a self-interest. You got to appreciate that and respect it, and then therefore make an appeal to that self-interest in our collective interests. And since I’m the other person on the phone — and I’m the face of this and the voice of this — they got to have trust that this has value, not just to them but to the overall mission.
Biggest What-Ifs in US Politics
Jordan Schneider: Biggest what-ifs in American politics over the past thirty years.
Rahm Emanuel: So we get TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] passed under Bush, and we have this big fight in the Obama years: how to interpret it, how to implement it, etc. And in the very early days of the Obama administration, we passed the stimulus bill, the recovery act, whatever you want to call it — that’s another $800 billion. Nobody would have ever done dollars like these. $800 billion here, $750 billion — big money in six months.
There was a big discussion in the White House then about the three initiatives by the president: health care, banking reform, and climate. And these are what you make decisions about — and at that point, just as the stimulus bill was passing, we were beginning to get the first Tea Party.
I argued strongly — and to the president’s credit, he asked for a meeting, we had a big discussion — I argued for doing financial reform first, because I thought that the political system, the society, needed to see bankers held accountable. And I thought, as I said then and I repeat, my quote was, “We need some Old Testament justice.” That’s what the country needs. You know, put the bankers in the middle of the public square and just literally beat the crap out of them — and reform the system that needed reform appropriately.
People said that if we didn’t do health care now, the clock would run out on health care. And if you look at the Clinton era, that’s true. My argument against doing that was: first, unlike in financial reform, bankers were going to be on the other side of the table. To pass health care, the lesson out of Clinton’s tenure was that the health-insurance industry — the lawyers, doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical industry — had to be brought to your side of the table. So you didn’t have a natural enemy except for the system.
The president made the calculation — between time, politics, policy goals, objectives — to go for health care first. And the early stages of the Tea Party explode, and you feel it in the 2010 midterms. But you also feel it beyond. And you could argue, which is my view — and that doesn’t mean I’m right, I’m just giving you my view, I think I’m right — that had we done something that dealt with the unaccountable financial industry and holding them accountable for having done what they did to people’s homes and their value in their retirement, their economic security, our American politics would not be filled with the rage and resentment that it’s filled with today.
Now I’m saying that on the eve of the anniversary of health-care reform, and it’s better that people have health care. But like one of the things that is not always appreciated: everything is weighing equities. Lots of people have health care. Lots of children have healthcare. As the son of a pediatrician, children have health care; it’s been better for their health.
But I’m not sure it’s been that great for the political health of the system. This little thing called the Tea Party has metastasized and grown into a politics filled with rage and anger and resentment. I think what I was proposing would have dealt with that at an early stage. Did I predict then that it would have come to where we are today? No. So that was a road not taken.
I think the second road not taken — and I joined President Clinton in this — I think the Palestinian people are better than the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinian leadership has constantly used the Palestinian people, and their aspirations and desires, for their own power rather than the people’s aspirations. And what was missed at Camp David when Ehud Barak and Yasar Arafat were there? What was missed when, right on the heels of Oslo, the bombing of buses in Tel Aviv while you had just made a peace agreement? I mean, it’s hard to think that in Israel in the early-mid-1990s, there was over 60% support for a two-state solution. Today, you couldn’t get two cents for a two-state solution.
When you think about either putting down the gun and making peace work, or, in the final days of the president’s administration at Camp David, to try to come to the agreement that Arafat said no to — I think those are roads not taken. But not by us. We not only gave a road, but we gave a GPS system, Google, we filled up the tank, we were the Uber driver. We did everything we could.
Look at 2006: Hamas gets elected. There wasn’t a single Israeli inside Gaza. They could have built not a tunnel. They could have built a school. They chose tunnels. They could have built hospitals. They chose tunnels. At some point, it’s a road not taken.
Jordan Schneider: Picking up on those two: what are you more optimistic about? America’s body politic healing itself, or some Israel-Palestine solution?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, I’m optimistic about both — otherwise I wouldn’t get out of bed. I’m not overly optimistic, but I am optimistic.
I actually think you could see right now on the heels: with some leadership shown by the greater Arab world, the Muslim world, by Palestinian leadership, by Israeli leadership — the world is ready to get past this moment into something more serious. The short term is difficult. The long term is self-evident.
As it relates to America’s body politic: it will not heal unless it has a doctor. I’m a fan of the president, and I think he has tried hard at that healing; the American people have a right to be, not because of healthcare over financial services.
The antecedent to that: we had two moments in the early turn of the century:
One is the deception that led to the Iraq war, and the lack of accountability for that deception;
and two, the deception — and no accountability — in the financial industry that led to the loss of people’s life savings in their home.
And those two moments changed our politics. And it’s going to take a lot to regain the trust and confidence of the American people. And they have a right to be angry.
Jordan Schneider: What’s the history book you want to write?
Rahm Emanuel: I’ve written two books, The Plan: Big Ideas for America and The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World — both about policy.
You probably picked the right topic — history. I’ve been approached about doing these kiss-and-tells: “Oh, you worked for three presidents…” I will never do that. It’s an honor to have the confidence of three presidents. I’d rather go to the poorhouse than trade in the trust and friendships and the experiences I’ve got. I think it’s been an honor to serve the country, an honor to serve the three presidents, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount.
If I had to write any history books? Kissinger just wrote a book on leadership. You could argue John F. Kennedy’s Profiles on Courage — whether he wrote it or not — was about leadership. I would like to say that things that I have seen that tell a bigger story about both leadership and historical moments to get them in the right kind of context and placement and set the record straight, because there are a lot of mythologies that get built up about things.
Jordan Schneider: Is there a bureaucracy from history or a leader you would have loved to have worked for?
Rahm Emanuel: Not a bureaucracy. There is no bureaucracy — ever, ever, ever. Ever. I suppose in American history, Abe Lincoln — if I could be a fly on the wall with any person, that would be it.
The Advice the World Really Needs to Hear…
Jordan Schneider: Do you have parenting advice for Japanese couples skeptical of having children? Or me — we’re expecting a kid in three months.
Rahm Emanuel: Look, I’m incredibly fortunate to have three really good children — not just fortunate, but healthy children; and when I say healthy, I mean intellectually, emotionally, psychologically. I think parenting is the most rewarding and most frustrating thing.
There are things to do as a parent, and I think it’s really underappreciated:
One is, everything I know about parenting came from this guy called Dr. Ben Emanuel and Marsha Emanuel. And if you don’t have good role models, it’s very hard to be a good parent.
And second, you got to work at it.
Third, there are things to do that matter. I think “quality time” is BS.
Jordan Schneider: What does that mean?
Rahm Emanuel: I just think it’s total BS. There’s no such thing as “quality time.” There is time present with a child that’s valuable, versus other time — but it’s not quality time. You can’t box off something.
We did little things: we made an effort more, more consistent than inconsistent, to do four dinners at night per week as a family — Shabbat, Sunday nights, and then two during the week — no matter when I was either mayor, chief of staff, etc. We used to have a summer reading list, and at the end of the summer, you had to do a dinner where you reported on the book you read and led a discussion of the family.
When I was mayor, chief of staff — I got in trouble when I was mayor, but I didn’t care — for twenty years, consistently, we always took a family vacation mid-March. So my job wasn’t always impacting the family, and I was more a father than I was either mayor or chief of staff and always being disturbed.
When our kids were doing homework, I would do my reading in one of their rooms, so I was present; it wasn’t a forced type of thing. I took each child — just one of the children and myself — on a holiday, so there was no appellate court, there was no sibling stuff.
But those are little tactical things. I think the most important thing is to build a home of love. And if you have love and an education, a kid will survive and thrive. My dad used to have this phrase: he’d never met a child that was spoiled because you told him you love him too many times a day. And not just tell them, but show them that you love them — not buying them things, but that you appreciate them. I think the rest of it takes care of itself. It’s very complicated, but straightforward.
Lightning Round
Jordan Schneider: How do you think Ari [Rahm’s younger brother] would do as ambassador to China?
Rahm Emanuel: I think the question is, “How would China do if Ari was the ambassador?”
Jordan Schneider: You think he could do a TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership]?
Rahm Emanuel: I think my brother Ari has found his niche. Let’s just say that. In the same way that I would do horrible at entertainment…
Jordan Schneider: You couldn’t take on Dana White?
Rahm Emanuel: I just wouldn’t have the patience for those type of egos.
Jordan Schneider: Oh, you think they’re worse than the ones you got to deal with here?
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah.
Jordan Schneider: How so?
Rahm Emanuel: No, no, no. That would just get me in trouble — but yeah.
Jordan Schneider: Have you taken Kabuki 歌舞伎 dance lessons?
Rahm Emanuel: No.
Jordan Schneider: Have you seen Shen Yun 神韻?
Rahm Emanuel: No.
Jordan Schneider: There’s ballet in it!
Rahm Emanuel: Got it.
Jordan Schneider: I got three books for you:
Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, by Joe Reynolds. It’s an urban history of Japan; it explains why you have all these little houses.
One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi, by Alan Lew. He has a short famous book about the High Holidays, but this one is a memoir about how he got into Japan.
The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall, by Eliot A. Cohen.
Rahm Emanuel: My brother and I are reading right now The Crisis of Culture. But that sounds like a good rap. I’ll take the Shakespeare one. Of three, you got one. That’s a win for you.
Jordan Schneider: We’ll send it over. What have you learned from Shakespeare about power and politics?
Rahm Emanuel: I would say: not everything that you think appears as it is, is what it is.
Jordan Schneider: What do you want to learn next?
Rahm Emanuel: I still grapple with this book, The Crisis of Culture. It’s by a French political sociologist [Olivier Roy]. How did we get to this moment in our “woke” culture, understand it without condemning it? That’s what the attempt of the book is.
From 1999, when America is the unipower — its economy was rolling, it was the power that could make peace in the Middle East — and now it’s 2024. That’s only 24 years. In history, that’s a blink of an eye. How do we get to where we are today, both as a society and economy, in the global place?
And I think the other thing I would try to learn — we all talk about power politics, but I think one of the things underappreciated for the next twenty years is: yes, you can talk about the US-China rivalry, US-Russia-NATO, east-west, liberal versus autocratic. Those are all valuable; I’m not judging them.
But I actually think — besides climate and pandemics — I think the big threat (and you’re seeing it in real time) is what I call “non-state, sub-state, and anti-state actors.” And to me, that’s going to be something to get your hands around. You just saw it in Moscow, and you’re seeing it off the coast of Yemen, and you saw it in the Gaza Strip. And to me, the non-state, sub-state, and anti-state are not the same thing, but they have the same consequences.
I gotta run. I got to go bone up on Shakespeare for my next book.
Jordan Schneider: Rahm Emanuel, thank you so much for being a part of ChinaTalk.
Rahm Emanuel: That was like one China and a lot of other things…