Leading With Empathy | Bill Haslam, Former Governor of Tennessee

That feeling of being evaluated all the time is, I mean, if you think about it just as a human being, that's hard, because we don't like the idea of ​​other people evaluating this, but when you run you raise your hand and say " check me out.” I think I'm the person. Vulnerability makes you see yourself in a way you've never seen yourself before. Featured iconic ideas from experts. The Walker webcast with Willie Walker sees who's next. It is an honor and a true pleasure to have Governor Bill. Haslam joins me today. I have been a big fan of Governor Haslam when he was in office and now that he is out of office.

I've become even more of a fan given what he's written and what he's been working on. uh Vanderbilt University, but we'll get to that in a moment, let me do a quick introduction to the

governor

and then we'll dive into our conversation. Governor Bill Haslam is the

former

two-term mayor of Knoxville Tennessee and the

former

two-term

governor

of Tennessee was re-elected in 2014 with the largest margin of victory of any gubernatorial election in Tennessee history during his tenure. Tennessee became the fastest-improving state in the country in K-12 education and the first state to offer free community colleges or technical schools for all For its citizens, the state also added 475,000 net new jobs during the administration's term. governor.

Haslam serves on the boards of Teach for America and Young Life and as a visiting professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, he graduated from Emory University and he and his wife of 40 years Chrissy have three children and 10 grandchildren Governor, Let's Get Started here when you graduated from Emory. I think your plan was to teach for a couple of years and then attend Seminary. What happened to make you deviate from Patcher's path of becoming a teacher and going to seminary and joining the family business Pilot Corporation, you know, I have a very wise father who is also a Horatio Alger story, um, and there was basically started, he bought a closed gas station and transformed it into a company that today sells about 12

bill

ion gallons of fuel a year, but he came to me at that time and said: listen, if you really think you're going to end up in the church Wouldn't it be helpful to understand a little about the business world? go teach for two years, you know what school is like, why don't you go into business for a couple of years, learn that world and then you'll be able to empathize better with the people who end up in your congregation?

And I thought that was great advice, so I went for two years and stayed for over 20 because it was an interesting and challenging environment and somehow I discovered that that was the right place for me instead of going to Seminary and being in a church as I had originally thought. Pilot today is the seventh largest private company in the United States and employs, I believe, 28,000 team members. First of all, it must be a great pride and joy that both your father and your brother and now your niece and yourself have created that company. in such an incredible company just for a moment Governor, considering where fuel prices are and where the economy is today, I realize that you are not in the company on a day-to-day basis, but what is your perspective regarding with the US economy and more particularly fuel, given that if the price of WTI crude oil, I believe, fell below 100 today to $95 a barrel, yes, there have been some encouraging signs recently.

I still think we have a basic problem of supply on demand and uh, I think as a country we know that I'm going to generalize too much, but we have done many things to encourage supply, demand, but not supply, and we are seeing the consequences of that , so I think it will improve a little. I think you're starting to see that I don't see a radical fundamental change that will take it back to the kind of prices that we normally associate with and that you pay at the pump any time soon that you left the family business Governor to uh Go and be CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue.com.

Help me understand how to leave a wildly successful family company in the services and oil business to go to a.com in the early 2000s. Well, yeah, don't you think that's a logical leap. Going from truck stops to online fashion seemed very logical to me. You know, it was interesting. I had been in our family business for 20 years and was ready to be somewhere where my name wouldn't appear. door, so to speak, um and those were the new days of internet retailing um and uh, this is, you know, the late '90s and early 2000s and people are literally making it up as they go, but that was interesting to me, so it became how do you take this? internationally known Fifth Avenue sax brand, translating it to the Internet and building a strategic plan and a team to make that last and those were all interesting things for me and I also knew that I wasn't going to do it forever, it was a A friend of mine was the CEO from Saks at the time said, Hey, why don't you come out for a couple of years and help us figure out how to do this?

Then you can and then you will be free to leave without any long-term contract. It was a long-term obligation, it was just a really fun and different challenge, so your father had been involved in Republican politics for quite some time, and in the early 2000s, several people in the Republican Party, in Tennessee, They started recruiting you to apply. for mayor of Knoxville and you write in his book about a meeting you had with your Friday the Fifth that gave you the encouragement to participate, can you describe what Friday the Fifth is and what they told you?

I got you to throw your hat in the ring to run for mayor of Knoxville early in my marriage, early in my business career. I started meeting every Friday morning with four other guys, there was a dentist, a lawyer, a banker and a guy who was in sales and we met every Friday morning just to talk about life, from raising kids to our marriages, how we spent our money and what decisions we were making in business and we started sharing life that way and I found it incredibly helpful. and then when I made a big decision like this, people came up to me and said who wants to run for mayor, to be honest with you at first I laughed, I thought you had the wrong person.

I have no interest, but I think so, why not? At least think and pray about it, it's a little hard to tell people that you won't think and pray about something they ask you, so okay, I said do that and I actually took it to my wife Chrissy first and she told me He said: you know? I think you should really seriously consider that and then I introduced them to these guys who knew me well. He knew the decisions he had made in the past. They knew my strengths and weaknesses, and to my surprise, they all encouraged me and said, "Hey, we really believe in you." You should try, so obviously that was a key point to get their acceptance and move forward, but I would say even more important is that you need people like that or their a lot of time before you make the big decisions in your life. so they can really help you make the big decisions, so the analogy I make is that unfortunately we have too many school shootings and when that happens, they always rush all these counselors to the scene, okay, the students that the kids with They want to talk. people who knew before this cataclysmic event and I think that's true in all of our lives, we need to have those people who not only when we get to those big turning points, but who have known us from the beginning, so they can really give us great tips. once the difficult decisions come, you write at length, Governor, about how much you enjoyed the experience of being there and

leading

the city of Knoxville.

He is also very direct in saying that he points out some of the mistakes he made and the difficulty of governing. But in your book Faithful Presence you write that the true leadership of leaders is connecting problems with the difficult process of governing. When did Americans lose the concept that government and institutions are fundamental to a functioning democracy? You know, I think it's been a process where we've become what I would call performative in nature rather than formative internal politics and the problem is that we've become so separated and polarized that there's no political benefit to actually resolving a problem, so take immigration correctly, I mean, there are, there are, there are. some very good reasons why we haven't solved that problem number one it's really difficult and complex um uh number two both parties make money off of it democrats say you know republicans keep kids in cages in the border and Republicans say Democrats just want the border open. borders and let everyone in and you know, I'm willing to bet that almost everyone listening to this has received an email to that effect, depending on which political party has their information, so there is no reward for solving a problem and A One of the things I'm trying to spend my time doing today or these days is to encourage people to support people who really have a history of solving problems and who really have a resume where they've done things that a lot of people can do. obtain.

Get up on a table and shout the things you want shouted, but I would remind you that there are very few consequences for that, so you wrote in faithful presence about running for governor after having had a very successful term as mayor of Knoxville and in it you speak. you know you want to talk about being vulnerable and moving on to the state level and as we all know there are only 50 gubernatorial races in the entire country so you're really on the national level when you get into that realm and talk about the vulnerability that felt by putting himself out there and running for a very important political office, not to demean in any way being mayor of a major city like Knoxville, but in Brene Brown's book, which I read and loved, Atlas of the Heart.

She talks about how vulnerability is fundamental to the innovative and creative process. Did creativity and innovation follow your feelings of mass vulnerability when running for governor of Tennessee? Well, I think so. I mean, here's why you feel vulnerable if someone remembers when you're in fifth grade and you have your craft and you walk up to the lunch table to sit down and you expect people to say, come sit with us, instead of doing some kind of sarcastic comment about you, that feeling of Being evaluated all the time I mean, if you think about it just as a human being, that's hard, since we don't like the idea of ​​other people evaluating us, but when you run You raise your hand and say, take a look at me.

I think I'm the person, okay, so you raised your hand to do that. I think that helps. I think Brown's points are really good in that vulnerability makes you see yourself in ways you haven't seen. yourself before you realize, well why am I so anxious about this? of the Soul, be a candidate if you want and by doing so, you learn, okay, here are the things that maybe I care too much and here are the things that I don't care enough, uh, and how do I do? I want to change that. Do you think having a career in business and being financially independent gave you more flexibility or leeway to govern rather than politics being a career?

You know it and that could be it. I mean, you always have to examine your own situation, you just know where you are depends on where you feel in a lot of cases, uh, and I mean, people say, well, okay, Bill, be honest, it's easy for you to be honest. being bold with this or that is not like you have to worry about where your next meal is coming from, but I think what a background in business did for me is this, it helped me see what great looks like and I think one of The One of the advantages of being part of companies that compete on a national scale is that you compete against really good people and you see what that looks like and you realize that if we are going to win, I am going to have to recruit people of this caliber and I am going to having to have a strategy that really adds value to my client and you think about all those things in ways that I think are really useful and that a lot of times people come to the political arena. without doing that and the last thing I would add is this at the end of the day, you know in your business numbers matter okay and by this I don't mean the poll numbers, but as a mayor as a governor. you have a budget that you have to balance, you have to do it, it's not like the federal budget, you have a constitutional mandate, uh, and everyone says they want you to run the government like a business until you do it and then, oh, don't cut that part.

I like that part, so there are a lot of tough decisions to be made, but the root of that is understanding the fundamental numbers of government and I think in the end, the two best things that companies provided me when I came in. Government number one helped me understand what it was like to hire a large team of people because you can't do itjust, you literally can't and then number two, understand the basic budget in a way that I was confident in. around gave me the courage to maybe try to do some innovative things to try to say maybe we can be the first state to have two years free of community college or technical school, we can figure out how to make the math work on that. about that u-pass legislation called insure Tennessee and you received a lot of criticism for supporting parts of the Affordable Care Act that was, you know, highly criticized by Republicans, that was the signatory legislation.of the Obama administration, like you points out in his book Governor, one of the main reasons there was such pushback is that Democrats in Congress, as well as the president, pushed it through without any Republican support for the legislation. the need to really move towards health care and insurance in Tennessee and make sure that Tennessee passed and was branded like that because I think I first believed in a rhinoceros that was a Republican name, only some explain why you supported parts of the ACA and why.

That was a big deal for Tennessee, yeah, well I actually wish your side of the story was true, I actually proposed that it didn't happen, oh no, Oh, I thought so, we got beat up at the first Committee hearing. Real quick, if you remind your listeners when the Obamacare Affordable Care Act was passed, people said this is not legal, this is not constitutional because you're forcing people to buy insurance, remember it's going to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is coming. We came back with this ruling that surprised everyone and they said no, actually, that is legal, what is not legal is forcing the states to cover this expanded portion of the population, because the states pay a part of that and, therefore, Therefore, each state can decide if they will cover it.

This is this part of the population, and initially we didn't do it and then I went back and negotiated something with the Obama administration that I thought was a very conservative policy where it literally wasn't going to cost us anything to do the hospitals because they were swallowing up all the money. costs of care from the indigent to the indigent, we will make up the difference. We're going to put some things in there that added personal liability to the Medicaid plan, which is, I think, one of the things that Republicans have a problem with. The root of this is you know you can't incentivize good behavior um for uh for care that is free for all without um without strings attached and so we put some things in there that I thought incentivized good healthy decisions uh and I number one, I thought. which was fiscally smart for the state, uh, it wasn't going to cost us a dime.

Number two, I thought it's the right thing to do. There are people you don't realize that before this, people think well, everyone if you're poor, you get health care, but before this that's not what happened. I mean, the people who got Medicaid in Tennessee were pregnant women, disabled people, people living in certain households, one of those two, in children, but no. If you just know that making twelve thousand dollars a year you didn't get Medicaid coverage, uh, and I felt like we'll be better off. People in society take better care of themselves, it will cost us less in the long run if I can go get preventive care at a hospital and it wasn't going to cost the stadium, so I thought it was the right thing to do, but I got infected and still to this day today, even though I'm not in the office, it's uh, some people don't forget, so you worked for Senator Howard Baker and you once told him to always remember that the other one might be right uh and you go on to say in your book that Governor getting to the right answer is more important than our Answer how you created and maintained that framework throughout your 10 years as mayor and governor.

You know that was Baker saying that I worked for him when I was a college student and, back to back, people don't even remember this, but the big issue of the day in the late '70s was whether or not we were going to give him the Channel Panama to Panama and if you took it back, you know, thousands of Americans right now couldn't tell you: Did we not keep it or did we keep it? give it to him, but at the time it was the big deal and President Carter proposed that Baker support it. He literally he was answering mail, that's when he was actually getting mail that was coming in on phone calls and it was 99 to one. against giving the canal to Panama and that was when I, you know, when I was an intern, he was the senator, we went, no, we didn't go out to dinner much, but when I had some time to talk to myself, I don't understand it, why did you do this? and he just said, you know you have to do the right thing and you have to start by sitting down and saying, “okay,” the other person might be right, I need to listen to them, uh, and for a 22-year-old, uh, or 21-year-old, Whatever it was, who would one day end up in politics?

There couldn't have been a better lesson to learn, so how did I apply those two or three things that I literally tried to establish? After our conference, I set up our conference room table in the governor's office, where instead of sitting at the end of the table, I moved to the middle because I quickly discovered that once we got there, everyone was waiting for me to respond. and then Whatever answer I walked into the room with was the answer we left the room with and that just didn't seem like a very good way to make decisions so we always started with "let's go to the best answer" uh and Do the right thing and let's talk about all the different possibilities.

At the end of the day, when we go out here, let's make sure we have the best answer. So you decided not to run for the United States Senate and replace Lamar Alexander. And as a candidate for two terms. very successful mayor and then governor for two terms, he would most likely have replaced Lamar Alexander in the US Senate and in his book he writes that he knows there is a big difference between running a state and going to Washington to being a citizen of the U.S. Senator and um, I quote you when you say that doing the hard things is just not worth it, seems to be the sentiment of many representatives in Washington, both in Congress and the Senate, um and let me for a moment, Governor Reed, something that Mitt Romney wrote last week in the Atlantic because I think it's a good way to understand his thoughts on national offices as they relate to the Senate and Congress and what's going wrong in our politics and Senator Romney writes that President Joe Biden is a genuinely good man. but he has not yet been able to overcome our national disease of denial, deception and distrust, a return of Donald Trump would feed the disease, probably making it incurable.

Congress is particularly disappointed because our elected officials put their finger in the wind more often than they show courage against Too often Washington demonstrates the maxim that all that is required for evil to prosper is that good men do nothing. I think so. I think that is absolutely right. Ad decided not to run for Senate for several reasons, one of which was that I had been in office for 16 years. and I really think it takes some time for people who spend their entire careers in public office. I don't think that's the best way to approach it.

I really believe that returning to the real world for a period that I honestly believe I have. Better Insight now after being out of office for four years than when I was in office, so that was one of them. I just thought it was time to get back to private life number two, even though I can't. I have to admit it. There was discouragement and one of the things I was interested in if I ran for the Senate was that I think we have a major problem with the national deficit and the debt is a big problem in my mind.

Well, when I went to talk to the senators. when I was thinking about running and even those who are, you know, fiscal conservatives were like, well, good luck with that, I tried it when I first got here and you know I broke my election on that rock and I'm No, not anymore. I'm going to keep harping on that and I came away thinking, well, if no one really wants to take on the serious problems, then I'm not sure if I'm going to feel like this is my friend Bob. Corker, who was a United States senator from Tennessee, used to say, like we said, you know, I'm just not sure this is a way for an adult to spend their time.

He was joking and he and I would mean it. It doesn't matter who we choose, but I said I wouldn't be so honest. I didn't say it was discouraging that people just don't want to try to solve problems because it's hard. Number one, number two, you're going to get beat up. From people on your side or on the right, if you're a Republican, they say, well, you're just in the soft middle, you're compromising with these Democrats and they're the bad guys. guys, or the other way around, if you're a Democrat, and you know there's no room for nuance in today's political conversation, and unfortunately, anyone who's run anything knows that nuance is necessary because things are never as black and white as they seem . the outside, so you start faithful presence on January 6th and you come back to January 6th and you asked how we got here and where we go from here and you quickly point out that you know divisive politics or you know Contested politics is part of the history of the United States United and you go back to Hamilton and Madison and talk about duels and things of that nature, but you say this time it's different.

What do you think makes this time so different? Governor, I think two, I think a couple of things. Well, for the first time in history we can choose our news in a way we haven't been able to in the past. I mean, you can watch your cable TV right now, tell me where you are on the political spectrum and I. You will find a TV news program that you want and that you like, and from the far left to the far right, you can find it all right. We all have confirmation bias. We would like to hear things that confirm what we know to be true. we are if you don't think you're like that uh ask a friend I promise you're okay we just am I mean like I said I loved it when I was in office I loved reading news about me that was good for you I know if you don't If it was bad, I'd scan the headlines and click on the sports page, you know, but if it was good, I'd read it, read every last line, that's just part of it. of who we are as humans so we get to choose our news and then we choose the news that tells us what we think and um the truth is we are in an evenly divided country.

You know, the last 10 presidential elections have been single digits, the House is six or seven votes apart, you know, it gets darker and I'll probably flip in this next election, the Senate is literally 50 50. or a nation evenly divided, but we don't think we are because we talk to everyone. to think like us the news that we hear or read things like we do with our friends that we go to church with or live in the neighborhood in which we have segregated ourselves into these ghettos of people who think like us so that That is a problem , the second is that it's easy, you know, the boogeyman that everyone picks on, but social media has really changed everything and the reality is you get picked, one of the reasons you do it is because you're good at reading the room, okay? you have people, unless you know that you have people on this webcast, that there are salespeople and one of the things you learn to do is read the room, what the room wants to hear and, unfortunately, today the politicians are reading the room . uh in a way that doesn't reflect who we really are if you go to Twitter you know that 80 of the tweets are from one of the four things they come from uh they're from people on the far right they're from people on the far left they're Russian or they're from Bots, you know people who pretend to be, you know they're someone who's not right, so the language that you hear reflects, like I said, the far right or far left if you're on Twitter all the time you're thinking, well, that must be it. where the people are, but it's not really where the people are, you know, Jonathan's height and the social sociologist at New York University, he says it's like we gave everyone a dart. gun and 80 of the people just put their dart gun in the closet and said, well look, okay, that's good, another 20 came out and started thinking if I shoot people, guess what happens, they react and more people tune in to see me shoot more people and when Twitter put in the retweet button and I guess in 2014 and when Facebook put in the like button now it suddenly became how I get a lot of responses and it turns out people respond well when you shoot more people. others.

So you mentioned Arthur Brooks' comment about the outrageous industrial complex, which I think is a great way to put it, and you go on to have the Governor quote Les Moonves, who ran CBS, talking about former President Donald Trump, it may not be Well. for America, but it's very good for CBS, um, it's not going anywhere, so I guess the question I have for you is that those are two, so to speak, forcescapitalists who have allowed this massive polarization of both the media we receive and the ideas we share, so we prohibit massive regulation to try to limit its impact, what is the solution to use it for a better good, so to speak, well, I think two or three things, this is going to sound a little backwards, but I think we need to go back or not, but it's like I had, you know, two Martinis, uh, good morning, we both need to be more involved in politics. and we need to worry a little less about it, let me start with this, we need to be more. involved in this way I continue with the amount of people who tell me you know I just can't, I'm just frustrated and exhausted by all of this.

I bet if we appealed to your audience right now and if we could somehow say everyone raise your hand, uh, if you're frustrated and exhausted by our politics, we're 80 today, okay. I've asked that question everywhere I speak and I get it, but the reaction from a lot of people I would call normal people is that I'm just them. They say I'm not going to play anymore I'm not going to get involved in a primary they're crazy um right on the right and on the left I'm not going to get involved but guess what happens that's what determines our candidates so people say I'm the fastest growing political segment today, Independence and you might think, well, wouldn't it be nice if we had some people? in the middle persuadable and you really have to persuade them to win an election, but the problem is that they are not determining who the candidates are, the candidates will be prepared by the time they get to the table and so the first thing I do would be not to withdraw from the process.

Who we elect matters a lot more than I thought. Okay, that's number one, but number two. Many of us gain our identity through our politics and are determining. We're determining everything through that lens and we decide that you know if you're on the side of good or evil, depending on whether you're with my group or not, and so we've already ghettoized ourselves, so we're already thinking well, yeah, I'm pretty sure those other people are evil, we have to come to the conclusion that someone can disagree with us and not be evil, and that's what I meant by we should worry a little less about our politics in the world. sense of the political side of the other side of the enemy the other side is not the enemy the other side has different opinions than yours um and if you sat next to him at a soccer game or uh it's you At the children's swimming competition , you might decide that they aren't such bad people after all, so I'm going to read your book, which I thought was a fantastic read.

You say that people of faith should play a central role in the future, but unfortunately that quote is not what has been happening too often, the words and actions of Christians have been done more to inflict those wounds than to heal them and you continue saying that Christians find excuses in their actions in politics that they would never make in other parts of their lives. I have a brief anecdote, Governor, and then I want to hear you respond. The mother of one of my dear friends passed away. I think it was 2016, maybe it was 2017. I flew to Greenville, South Carolina, for her funeral and walked into a very large church.

There must have been over a thousand people there and I sat in the upper left corner and watched and listened to the sermon at her funeral about what an incredible woman she was, the time and effort she put into the church and words of honesty and love and humility and all the things you talk about in your book and after the service and this was the president it was 2016 so it was during the campaign okay and I came out afterwards and told my friend it was an amazing service but my feeling It's that 98 of the people in that church are going to vote for Donald Trump and I don't understand the conflict between listening to a sermon about a woman and everyone there who is God-fearing being supportive or honest and simple and still going to let that happen. aside and vote for Donald Trump and my friend looked at me and said a pro-life Willie said that those people are leaving all that aside on that issue and So my question is this Governor.

First of all, it may or may not have been correct, that was my friend's assumption when it came to thinking that it was my assumption that 98 people in the church were going to vote for Donald Trump, but it seemed that This big conflict that emerged during the Trump era from a person who embodied conservative thoughts when it came to governance and yet was a juxtaposition when it came to his personality and it seemed that many Christians in America put their personality aside because they wanted to address the issues and obviously today, a week and a half after the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v Wade, I'm sure a lot of people in that church said I got what I was waiting for. because, but how is it then, Governor, that we are supposed to look for people who use faith and Christianity to intervene and yet at the same time there has been what appears to be and you point out some kind of conflict, so To say it, between what they actually represent and what they're looking for in politics, yeah, so, you had a lot of excellent points and I and I agree, I agree with what your underlying premise is and one of the points why I wrote the book. this, um again, I'm writing from a Christian perspective, but Christians, um, you know, would say that the greatest sermon of all time was the Sermon on the Mount.

And if you want to summarize Jesus' sermon there, it would be different, that's where AC brings it. above salt salt is supposed to be different from meat light is supposed to be different from darkness and my unfortunate experience in office is that that was not true the christians acted like everyone else they were just as likely to look down on someone on the internet was very likely to treat the other side as the enemy, when we're supposed to love our enemy, you talked about Arthur Brooks, um earlier, just as a quick aside, I was speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast one year while Donald Trump was president and he had just written a book called Love Your Enemies, which are those are the words of Jesus, okay, you know, those are those words of Jesus, and President Trump stood up and said well, I agree.

I agree with all that, except love. your enemies and Brooks later said well, it takes quite a bit of courage, I guess, to stand up and disagree with Jesus at the National Prayer Breakfast, um, but I think going back to how the church got here, I think. He came here out of fear and then your friend might be right. I mean, the pro-life issue is very important to the church, but I think even more than that, I think the church was coming from a place of fear, it was seeing the world that they knew and were comfortable with slipping away where it already was.

You know, you know, Sunday mornings aren't for church anymore, they're for Starbucks and football games, you know, 50 years ago, your local newspaper probably had a Bible verse from The Day When Ya let's not live in that world, uh, and people look around, you know, sexual mores are changing and they say, wow, this world, I feel like it's slipping away from me, uh, and they reacted out of fear. which is a horrible place to react to anything, you know, probably one of the most frequent commandments in Scripture is do not be afraid, do not be afraid, and yet that's where we come from and, again, I think if You ask why I think there is a feeling that we have lost ourselves and have identified more with the political goals that we want and the quote you refer to in the book we justify things politically than being the church that we would never justify in any way. another area of ​​our lives, in other words, if someone came up to me in church and said, you know, I know all this.

I'm supposed to be faithful to my wife's treatment, but the woman in the office next to me is really attractive. We wouldn't give them a break or if you said in your business you know, um, you know, I know I'm supposed to be ethical here, but yeah, I took some shortcuts because I was about to go out of business, we wouldn't. Let's say that's fine, but we said it because there is so much at stake here, because what is being decided in the political sphere is so big and so important and so critical that we can abandon those things that we know to be true and, as you know, that It's so I said the book that that is Machiavelli that is not Jesus Machiavelli is the one who says the end justifies the means uh Jesus calls us to be faithful regardless of the circumstances so you one of the questions that you ask or that I ask myself while I read your book was how do you engage in the political process faithfully and go to a share of Lincoln with malice towards none with Clarity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right and later in the book Governor you We talked about the fact that there is law and it seems like we have lost the ability to understand that there is actually truth, that there is law and that there is truth in the world that we live in and there seems to be this, I mean.

The worlds that you just talked about are the press very bifurcated between the left and the right and what we can see on cable news and then on social media that seem to say that there is no truth, there is no right, how can we How do we get there? that going back to the dialogue you are more frequent your questions are really good uh I'm joking because you've done very well um but I think you know we used to live in a world where it was this idea of ​​stated truth and we've moved to this idea that truth is relative, that you know that you are yours, whatever you have determined to be true is true, so we have lost this idea that there is a true truth. if you want um and everything has become relative and I think we're paying the price for that and you know it's been said that you know uh Donald Trump was the first post-truth candidate where it mattered more how we said something than what we said um and you know, uh, the Kellyanne Conway quote, uh, uh, about you know, being in a world of alternative facts, um, the reality is we're seeing that not just in politics but across the board and we're paying You know, this type of society that is in a post-truth world and we are all paying the price for that.

Yes, there are so many interesting things that you say in the book as you go back to both the Scriptures and your own faith in the way that you both live your life and then also in the way that you governed as governor and one of the things of The ones they speak of in the Scriptures are of people who must be molded and remodeled and who learn from their own faith. experiences and yet I hear that and being molded and reshaped and in the political world that is anathema to being successful. I remember well The Branding of John Kerry as someone who changes his mind and God forbid he ever changes his mind on any issue. that was ever presented to him and that if he doesn't straighten out exactly what he thinks, he is somehow not being faithful to the cause, whether it is a left-wing cause or a right-wing cause, and during his tenure as governor he was able to take advantage of his faith to guide your actions and at the same time listen to the other side and go back to the quote above as it relates to the other side, you might actually be right, how did you handle that governor in the sense that there are many? people who say that if you're a Christian you need to stand strong and steadfast in what we believe to be a certain ideology within that and yet you had several decisions that came your way, at least from what I read, for example when the legislature passed legislation to make the Bible the state book of Tennessee, and as I read your book, I'm sitting there saying this is an easy sign for Governor Haslam, who was a man of faith and a devout man.

Christian and you still didn't sign it, how did you get to that point? So I think the whole kind of flip-flopping versus what it is um. I've learned, I've learned new things, so I've come to uh, new decision points, um, there's actually a real distinction there, if you're shifting for political advantage, the sort of finger-in-the-wind politics that you talked about before, then you know that's wrong if you're changing because in the process you learned more about that topic. I mean, I'll give an example. I learned a lot more about judicial sentencing once I was in office than before and came to some new conclusions I didn't know. before taking office.

I hope I haven't been changing. I'm thinking so. I had learned uh and again came to a new conclusion: the

bill

you talked about was interesting. because, you know, our legislature passed something to make the Bible the official book of the state, you know, the states have official everything that we have, you know, birds, insects, trees and everything else, um uh, in the process that, by the way, I learned, I always assumed that the official drink of Tennessee was Jack Daniels until I found out it was actually milk, so something I probably should have known before publishing it, but they said we want to make the Bible the official book and that's it. you know, the Establishment Clause of the Constitution of the The state in the US is very clear that we are not going to make any law that establishes a religion um and I felt like this was doing that um and they said well, we are not recognizing if the Bible recognizes that it is a bookhistorical and so on Well, if that's true, then, you know, I think you're being a little disingenuous because no, I don't really think it's that and I think, by the way, to me now you're just making it a historical book instead of the word of God, you are violating what you said you believe, so, to me, it actually became very clear that this was not the right thing to sign, but that is a bill that I literally today will encounter people in the supermarket or somewhere and I'll tell them: I still can't believe you banned the Bible.

Yes, you had that other anecdote about the woman who came up to you and she told you that you were trying to eliminate the writing. script on the curse of schools and that she was accusing you of not wanting children to be able to read the Constitution properly, so, you know, unfortunately we live in a world where the easiest way to make something you know go viral is saying something negative about another person and putting a conspiracy theory behind it only adds jet fuel, so you recommend that we think biblically about our politics instead of politically about our faith, let's talk about that for a moment, I mean, The reality is that if you are in a church for a period of time where you have probably seen many opportunities to go, we are going to have a seminar or a weekend the Christian marriage or their children are involved, you know the youth group from high school, this is what it looks like to walk faithfully with Christ as a high school, middle school or college student, or maybe there are Christian business people.

Association Etc. Everything about this is what it looks like to walk faithfully in that Arena, we don't really do that in politics, there is no one to say this is what it looks like and as a result, you referred to earlier when talking about the church in Greenville. this praise for this woman who was, you know, this woman of humility and meekness and service, etc., that didn't seem to fit with church policy and this is the example she would give us. I recently saw a poll of Republican primary voters. and I asked him what he's looking for in his next presidential candidate and he gave him like 20 adjectives to choose from for number one, by far, it was Christian, okay, the last number 20 was humble, okay, now I would say there's a case in that someone has done it.

I didn't really think about what the theology of their politics is, how we're supposed to act and again we justified it by saying there's so much at stake that Bill, you're asking us to bring a pillow to a knife fight, uh, there's a lot at stake. game to play in this nice Sunday school world you're talking about. I was talking to a group of pastors right after the book came out and I finished this art, you know, my kind of creation. my argument and I have to put my hand up and say well has that ever worked anywhere what you're talking about?

I remember thinking two terms, how about two terms in Tennessee? Well, you know, Jesus is not asking us like he does, hey. I have a really cool political strategy for you, if you're a Christian, you're following someone who didn't come to kill the bad guys, he came to let the bad guys kill him, okay? The pastor asked me: Has this ever worked anywhere? I would say again. Wrong question. What is the question? If those who call themselves Christians are going to faithfully act like this, the goal is not to win, it is not to win the argument, the goal is to get to the right answer and serve faithfully, period, yes, he continues with the Governor to say: I am not asking believers to be silent about the things that are important to them, but I am asking them to separate those things as it is a matter of politics and those things that we know are clear biblical truths love your neighbor walk with humility and kindness and I find it very interesting when you talk about that list of what people want in their next president and you have number one Christian and you have number 20 humility and you ask in your book how do you know if the Republican Party, particularly evangelical Christians, are known for abortion and gay marriage issues, then humility needs to be inserted there as a defining characteristic and it's not today and it's very interesting to see you come back and talk at length in your book about where the True North should be, exactly in the example you just gave. show, it's nowhere near where it needs to be on the list, yeah.

I mean, it's um listen even on those issues gay marriage abortion like where um the church could say hey, we believe we have, you know, we believe we have biblical truth behind us here. I would still say start by saying, are you approaching that with humility and with Empathy with people who are in very different situations than yours doesn't mean you give up on the truth and, again, I would separate the Bible very clearly. Listen. I am a fiscal conservative. Okay, I think the Bible is really clear on some things, it says we're supposed to feed the poor now.

I'd say it's not clear how we're supposed to do it. Should we do it through government systems through charity? I would lean towards it again. I am a fiscal conservative. I don't think big government programs work very well. I don't think I can present that as a biblical argument. I can present it because that's what Bill believes works politically and practically. And I don't believe you. You may be on one side or the other biblically now, but I would say that feeding the poor is not a topic of debate. The question is how do we do it, so I use all of that as an example that there are things that we have clear biblical imperatives for. uh, uh, let's be really faithful in those things and um, you know, the quote that I would use to summarize all the time is you know from Micah in the Old Testament, you know what the Lord requires of you, act justly, love mercy and walk humbly, justly love mercy and walk humbly, I would say that if the church did that, it would be the magnet that would draw people in and say, wow, I want to be with people like that, hey, you keep going. point out James 4 6 where it says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, but when I read that Governor I sat there and scratched my head saying how many politicians can I define today as humble and I know you know many more than I know, but I know many leaders both nationally and locally and I very rarely come across many who present themselves to me in any way close to humility and I think that one of the things you point out is that you need to create profiles on the networks. social media and spreading an image is the antithesis of humility it's thinking about yourself it's making yourself special it's trying to get it out there so you can get thumbs up and retweets of what you've done written, which means it's just a kind of prophecy self-fulfilling in the sense that, with this technology in place, people will still say that the way to gain influence is to act in a proud way and not in a humble way, you know. um, you're right, I mean, yes, I can.

I can definitely think of some politicians who I think are examples of humility. There are definitely men and women serving like that and you know I could create a big list of that, but it's not the predominant type of character, uh, because it's not what the current market rewards, but I would say this, um, who do you want work? Do you want to work for the narcissist? No, I mean, none of us did and so why? We're hiring those types of people to lead us and I also think it's going to take the right person, but I think the right person can come, who can lead in a way that people look at and go, that's a different way.

I am so frustrated and exhausted by where we are now. I am ready to sign up and help such a person. Honestly, I think maybe he was like a drunk who has to hit rock bottom, but we are ready for a different type of candidate, I thought it was really interesting that in his book he included Jim Collins and good to great and his identification among 1500 public companies , the 11 CEOs who had shown three extra shifts over a 15-year period and if they went and found out whether they were Christians or not, they led in a Christian way like theirs and I thought it was fascinating that you had gone and done that and then I looked at their profiles and me.

I've read the book several times and it's a fantastic book, but you're right: those leaders of those companies weren't the headline stealers, they weren't the big personality types, they were typically very humble people who listened. to many contributions who were happy to adapt their corporate culture and their corporate corporate policies to be able to find themselves where the markets were, yes, I mean the conclusion, you are right again, the conclusion after they did all those studies and they did not begin to knowing what they were looking for and they summarized it there were two consistent characteristics there were people who were very clear about the mission they were on, number one and number two, they knew that the story was not about themselves and those were the people who produced the best returns and I would say the exact same thing is true and that translates from the business environment to the political environment and what we need is more people who and I bet this describes as I said the majority of your listeners, people who are frustrated and exhausted by the process now that says, I'm ready to go find people, whether it's on the school board or running for president of the United States, who can bring a different attitude to running for office.

So, Governor, as we wrap up here, you talk very personally in the book about some of the most difficult decisions that you had to make as Governor, um and um, you waited until the end of your term as Governor to consider any pardons and you talk. extensively about Cintoya's forgiveness and both the difficulty in making the decision, but also meeting her for the first time with his wife and what that was like, could you talk to our listeners a little bit about that and just give them an idea of ​​why ? it was such a difficult decision for you and B why did it feel so good when it actually happened yeah, I made a big mistake that you're talking about, you know, changing my mind.

I made a big mistake as Governor when I came in and decided to push everything forward. The requests for forgiveness went all the way because some people who had served before gave me advice that if not everyone who knows someone on death row or someone you went to college with who has a DUI will come. asking for forgiveness. and the governor actually has absolute power when it comes to pardons and exonerations and pardons of examiners, as long as you don't get a personal reward for it, you can do whatever you want. I put it off and thought it would be really easy. oh, I will be like Solomon, I will say yes, they are forgiven, no, they need it, so it would be with all my wisdom, I could have gone over it and discovered that it was really very difficult to be just and merciful.

At the same time, it turns out that it is very difficult. One case in particular came up is that of a woman named Cintoya Brown, who at the age of you know, when she was a young teenager, ended up working on the streets, um, uh, as a prostitute at the age of 16 um, she has a boyfriend, a pimp who keeps pushing, keeps pushing her back to the streets, long story short, picks up a businessman and shoots him in the head, um, in his bed, uh, he's tried as juvenile incense for life in prison, which means she's in Tennessee, the way the law works, she won't come out until she's 70 um and uh, so my random documentary about or and all of a sudden it went viral and people like LeBron James and Snoop Dogg and Kim Kardashian and I can go on, I started tweeting, you know, call the governor of Tennessee, email the governor of Tennessee and tell them to release Toya and so it became so huge, you know, political, this big case that got all this attention in social media, I mean, it was literally shut down. on the switchboard for the entire state of Tennessee with the incoming phone calls uh and like I said, it reminded me again how difficult it is to be fair and merciful in the end um I did a lot of research into her case and it turned out that she really had a life that had changed our prison system doesn't work many times it doesn't really bring the reform that we wanted in her case I became convinced that she was much better for society outside of prison than inside um, she had gone and obtained her degree in prison and she had a 4- 0 which is a little higher than my GPA.

I need to confess at this point uh and then I met some people who had literally gotten to know her in prison and we made the decision to release her and part of the story that I tell in the book, what is the opportunity to meet her afterwards and since then we We've reunited several times, but every once in a while you get to see the backstory. I call the tapestry that God is weaving in all of our lives and usually you only see your portion, but this time I had the opportunity to see this woman who had been praying for this decision that we are making literally praying day and night about it.

We were praying about how to do the right thing and when it was over, we had the opportunity to sit together, become friends and compare notes and see again the tapestry that God was weaving. I mean, it sounds cool, I hate. say itIt sounds really cheesy but it really was a beautiful picture yeah it's really an incredible story the way you tell it in the book and just keep it here it's something extraordinary and Redemption and forgiveness um and some really important things that I think a lot of we forget quite often and you did it in a very public scene in a very public setting, so the Governor's last question for you is that you are richer than Donald Trump.

I have won three more elections than him and you have a leadership style that seems to be exactly what America needs today. Any chance we'll hear about another meeting of the five on Friday and see you on the 24th. Yeah, honestly, I don't know. I hope to have the opportunity to hold public office at some point again. Just to be blunt, running for president is not a decision that should be made lightly. I see the process and what it takes. And you, I mean in my language, would have done it. You definitely have to feel called to do that and feel like there's a strategic path for that to work as well, and honestly, I don't know the answer to your question, but again, one way or another, I hope to get it. to serve in some kind of public role again, I just firmly believe in it and see what kind of difference it can make, so I don't mean to dodge your question, but I don't really have an answer as we sit here. and to be honest with you, I didn't expect you to come out and announce your campaign for president of the United States while you're on Walker's webcast, but I will say, let me make a point, I will say this, uh, I've never heard of it.

Walker's webcast before you asked him to come, but since then I've been inundated with people from all over my past, people I haven't talked to since grade school like, oh, I can't believe you're going to be on Willy's show, that's cool and I'm How am I the only person in America who has missed this so far? Thanks for leave me. It's been great to be part of the team they've had here. Well, it's fantastic and I would just say Governor. the work you're doing at Vanderbilt on the project on American unity and democracy. I take my hat off to you.

I've seen a lot of your interviews with Fascinating People talking about why our politics are so divisive today and trying to get the message across. of unity and togetherness and, you know, I would like to see you return to the political arena. I also really appreciate the work you're doing at Vanderbilt to try to bring these issues home. Thank you. and I really want to say it's been a nice conversation thank you for doing your homework, you've read, you've read the book better, I think more closely than some members of my own family. It's great to have you as Governor for everyone. those who join us this week thank you very much and see you soon thank you Governor goodbye foreigner