I interviewed John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief-of-staff and current president of the Center for American Progress, for my old friends at Campus Progress. We talked about his views on religion and politics, what the new progressive movement needs to do to succeed, and why Bill is a progressive. Check it out -- here's an excerpt:
One of the things you do in the book is defend President Clinton's legacy as a progressive. I think a lot of progressives today try to set themselves apart from the politics that President Clinton followed while he was in office. Why do you think there's that kind of divide between progressives who don't see President Clinton as one of them?
A lot of it is [about] the way he approached globalization, trade, and opening markets abroad. The president's thinking evolved over the course of his presidency. I think he came to a place that makes sense from a progressive perspective. When you think about what President Clinton focused on—which is raising wages for people, expanding the earned income tax credit, raising the minimum wage, focusing on supporting work, expanding the circle of opportunity, reducing crime, increasing aid to education—those are all very progressive ideas. He came from, I think, a background in which he really understood the lives of working people. He grew up with a single mother in Hope, Arkansas. It wasn't abstract, it wasn't theoretical. It was about improving people's lives. And if you look at what happened over those eight years, peoples' lives got a lot better—across the board, from the rich to the poor, everybody grew together, and I think the country got stronger as a result.
--Tim Fernholz
